Ep 269: Turning Your Struggles into Your Story with Chris Norton | Recap Episode
RV (00:03):
Wow. You can only be more grateful when you hear stories like that, of Chris Norton and what an incredible story and a powerful interview and so many great reminders that extend, you know, far beyond, far beyond what we’re doing in terms of building a business and building a personal brand to just being grateful for life and, and being grateful for the ability to walk and put your clothes on and go for a run and throw your kids up in the air. And I just, I love, I love it’s. One of the things I love about this industry is that you meet so many people that are like that. I mean you know, we just, I have friends that have overcome so much you know, our friend Hal Elrod died one of our friends, Danny Bader, that is a brand builder member.
RV (00:57):
He, he died for a few minutes, like we’ve got you know, John O John O’Leary is one of my dearest friends. I just love that man. And he was burned on a hundred percent of his body and he just, you hear these amazing stories of people just overcoming and it’s just such great, great perspective on life and business, and, and then watching people of like that turn their, turn, their pain into purpose, right. Turn their struggle into their story. And what a beautiful moment to, to, you know, see someone like Chris, be able to go through something so hard and now know that he’s traveling the world, telling the story about how he overcame that. And through that he makes enough money to provide for seven children, six adopted and one foster at this point. But they’ve, they’ve did you catch that in the interview where he talked about, they have had 19 foster kids that, I mean, that’s incredible how that’s extraordinary and just super inspiring.
RV (02:07):
So if you didn’t listen to the, the interview about Chris, go back and, and, and listen to it, make sure you hear this story about how his life changed in a minute in a second, a split second. He got paralyzed in, in a football game and, and it changed his whole life. But for me I’ll just share my big highlights, some of the biggest reminders that really stuck out to me. First of all, th this one, you know, I grabbed, I, when I was taking notes, when I was listening, I, I didn’t realize that I would come back and, and grab this, but this was kind of a quick moment and a subtle moment when, and Chris was telling a story, but I looking back through my notes, I realized how monumental of a decision. This is in a split second.
RV (02:58):
And so happens is, you know, he, he gets paralyzed. He has a four hour surgery. The next day he wakes up, he’s coming out of you know, he’s basically coming back to consciousness and he asks the surgeon, am I ever gonna walk again? And the surgeon says, you know, you only have a 3% chance of even in being able to move, let alone walk, like being able to move a finger or an arm, let alone walk. And and the, the split second decision that he made, which he kind of buzzed right through when he was telling the story was, he said, you know, I decided that I was gonna do whatever it takes to be a part of that 3%. And, and he kind of just like tapped on that. But thinking about it after to me is like, that is that, that pivot point moment, right?
RV (03:54):
Where in, in it’s basically like his entire future was going to head in one of two directions based on basically a subconscious calculation, a subconscious decision that happens in this, this one moment of hopelessness to go either. I’m going to allow my nearly guaranteed fate to just take its course and be the 97% or to choose in a split. Second, I’m gonna be a part of the 3%. I am going to have a life that is different than most people in my situation, that I am going to find a way to do whatever it takes to become someone who achieves and has the thing that most people don’t have. And you might not ever be paralyzed. I hope you’re not. I hope you never find yourself in any kind of, you know, desperate and dire situation like that. But the thing that we all have in common with Chris is that all of us have to make those decisions.
RV (05:00):
We have to make that decision. At some point in our life, we have to make that decision to go. I don’t care what the statistics say. I don’t care what happens to the majority of people. I don’t care about how improbable or unlikely or impossible that this journey may be on. I’m going to do whatever it takes to be in that top 1%. I’m going to do whatever it takes to be the exception to the rule. I am willing to do whatever it takes to break free of the pack of the norm of the average of the statistics. And I will go out and achieve and, and, and, and have, and conquer the things that I feel called to have you made that decision, like listening right here right now, have you made that decision in your life?
RV (06:03):
Have you already come to the conclusion? Have you already arrived at the commitment to say, I don’t care what it takes? And I don’t, I don’t care what has happened to everybody else, whatever it takes is what I am willing to do, because that is a requirement of greatness. It’s a prerequisite of success. It is an absolute necessity. You can’t have it without that. Excellence is never an accident. It is always a decision. Have you made that decision? So that was a great reminder for me, the second thing. And he said this several times, which was just, you’ve heard this before. I’ve heard this before. I’ve said it before. You’ve probably said it before. But to, to reexperience this in the realness of the situation that Chris was in, is he talked about being focused on what you can do, not worrying about what you can’t do. And, and, and not just, not only worrying about what you can’t do, but not count don’t count what you can’t do. Don’t measure what you can’t do. Don’t all the things you can’t do. Don’t focus on the things you can’t do. Don’t don’t think about the things you can’t do. Don’t allow yourself to be consumed with what you can’t do, rather instead, focus on what you can do.
RV (07:43):
Think about what you can do, plan what you can do, appreciate what you can do. Take action on what you can do live in what you can do, appreciate what you can do. Sit in gratitude and revel in gratitude and revel in the marvelous wonder of everything that you can do. If you do that, you’ll be happy. You’ll be grateful, no matter what your situation is. And that hit me so much when he was saying, you know, people walk up to me on the street, you know, even now, and they just say, oh, I feel so, so sorry for you. And, and I would too. I do too. When I, I see people and, and he nailed it, right? It’s that happens because we’re projecting our fears are, we’re like our insecurities of what, how we would maybe respond in that situation. But I don’t get even a shred even, I don’t even get a sliver of sense that Chris is unhappy.
RV (08:50):
I mean, definitely was a dark road there, right? I mean, he talked about every bit of, it sounds like it took every bit of four years to, to get out of that, but like where he is today with kids and impacting lives and running a business and you know, married and getting to speak and do the things that he wants to do. I mean, I don’t get a, a sense of all that he’s unhappy and that’s because he’s focused, he focused on what he can do. He continues to focus on what he can do. He’s grateful for what he has. And that’s inspiring to me to go, how much should I, how much more in my life could I afford to be that way? Like, there’s so much that I have in my life that other people and have, and I so quickly and easily overlook them.
RV (09:41):
And, and there’s, there’s even so many things I have in my life today that were faint dreams of what I had when I was younger. That would be it, it would be impossible. Things that I never thought would become true that are my actual reality every day. And I step over them as if they were nothing. I look past them as if they weren’t even there. I don’t even stop for a second to say, thank you, God. Thank you, wife. Thank you friends. Thank you family. Thank you kids. Thank you. Business partners like you for what I have
RV (10:25):
And, and Chris does, and that’s, that’s what part of what makes him amazing and, and just extraordinary and inspiring. And so I hope you’re doing that. I hope you’re doing that. I hope you’re not stepping over those things and taking the smallest, the smallest, smallest things for granted. And and then the third thing, which again, is something you’ve heard before. Something you’ve probably said, certainly something I’ve heard something. I talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about at brand builders group, but it hits different in the context of a real life situation like this, which is the power of service, the power of service. There is something so deep and profound and, and powerful AB about a spirit of service. And when Chris shifted his conversation, like in his own mind, when he SHA changed his thoughts, when he started realizing that his actions and his behaviors were affecting other people that gave him the fuel to keep going.
RV (11:45):
And it is, I believe this is the well that we all want to be drawing from. This is the source that we want to pull, like, you know, our inspiration from, and that we wanna pour, pull our motivation from, because if it’s money, you’ll get some money and it’ll wear off. If it’s, if it’s fame, you’ll get some fame and you’ll realize it’s not that big of a deal. Like, but if, if you are J genuinely concerned about contributing to the betterment of humanity, if, if you are actually deeply aware of the impacts that your behaviors and your attitudes, even, and your thoughts but certainly your actions and your behaviors have on the people around you, it causes you to live differently, to live, to live more aware, to be more alive, to be more astute. And, and also to be more powerful, to be more commanding, to be, to be more bold, to be more confident, to have more perseverance or right.
RV (12:57):
It’s easy to let ourselves down. It’s tremendously difficult to let down somebody else it’s so much more inspiring and compelling to, to want to benefit other people. And so if you can find a way to live in that spirit of service every day for your life and for your business, you can overcome just about anything. Chris is a real life example of that, but when we’re burn out, when we’re scared, when we’re tired, when we are exhausted, when we’re overwhelmed, we’re only thinking about ourselves in those moments, we have completely lost sight of how our life has value in the con has the most value when it is placed in the context of another human life.
RV (13:52):
When we’re present to that, the pain, the challenges, the difficulties they wan, they, they, they start to lessen. They don’t go away, but they, they pale in comparison to the positive impact that we’re having on somebody else. As, as we say, around here a lot, there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. So are you clear, are you clear on who you’re serving and not just, are you clear, but are you present to it? Are you mindful and conscientious and deliberate and intentional and aware and focused on who you are serving and realizing the,
RV (14:52):
The echo that your IM that your behaviors have on their life. Because if you are, then you’re probably operating from a place of endurance and perseverance and strength and persistence, because it’s not so easy to give up when, you know, there’s someone that’s to, depending on you. And so we gotta get present to that. We gotta get present to the idea, you know, these three ideas, we gotta get present to the idea that I’m going to commit to being different from the ordinary, that I am going to pay attention to what I can control and not worry about what I can’t control and that I am going to place my life in the context of others through the way of service in that these decisions will help me be more grateful. These decisions will give me more endurance. These decisions are the decisions that lead to success to achieve my it conquering, but even bigger than that, they li they lead to happiness and they lead to peace.
RV (16:04):
So I hope you were inspired as much as I was by the Chris Norton story. And by all the stories of all the great guests that we have here every single week, if you haven’t yet, please go leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, wherever you listen. So that O other people know what they can experience, what they can expect to experience the kinds of amazing stories, just like this one that they will hear if they, to subscribe to this podcast and share this episode, like this episode, specifically share this with somebody the, who needs encouragement and inspiration and, and send this to them, and just either send them the link or go onto iTunes and, and copy the link from there and send them and say, listen to this episode. And this story about Chris Norton have a great one. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 268: Turning Your Struggles into Your Story with Chris Norton
RV (00:02):
Well, one of the joys of my life of being a speaker is that I get to see other speakers and my entire life I’ve come across speakers, who I’ve gotten to know personally who have climbed Mount Everest and walked out of the Andy’s mountains on barefoot and won, you know, national championships and world championships, Epson just overcome really amazing things. And today I feel like I’m, I’m meeting one of those people for the first time. You’re about to meet Chris Norton. We new friends, so we’ve never even talked. But I have been familiar with his story. He knows my friend Tyler Dickerhoof and you know, a lot of the same people and some of the same circles that we’ve been. We’ve been hanging out with David nurse. And I’ve heard really great things about Chris and he had a a spinal cord injury when he was playing college football and lost all feeling and movement from his neck down.
RV (01:02):
He was only given a three chance of ever really moving and walking again. And it was, you know, clearly a, a difficult and dark moment in his life. But with the support of his friends and family like you know, his, the love of his life, Emily Chris proved the Dr. Wrong. He walked across the stage at graduation and the video of that went viral like around, around the world. And later he walked his, his bride, Emily seven yards down the aisle at their wedding. So his story has been published in, in a book. It was been a documentary about his life story is out right now on Netflix and Amazon prime and apple TV. It’s called seven yards referring to the seven yards of Chris walking, his wife down the aisle, seven yards, the Chris Norton story. And he is a, a, a really fast rising speaker and just an awesome guy. It’s a Chris, it’s great to meet you. Welcome to the show.
CN (02:07):
Yeah. Thank you, Rory, for having me and for that great introduction. And it’s just an honor to talk with you and I’ve heard so many great things about yourself, so great to be here.
RV (02:17):
So tell me your, so tell me this story, man. So you are living the dream. You’re playing college. One, one moment. You’re playing college football and then in a second it changes.
CN (02:28):
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll take you back. 11 years ago, freshman year Luther college in decor, Iowa live the dream. I had these big plans for myself, be this all American football player, meet the girl, my dreams. And then I was hoping to make enough money to on a lake house or better yet the girl of my dreams family already on lake house. But then you know, life happens and it was during the sixth game of my college football season, a third quarter were mounting a comeback. So I ran out to the field and a kickoff and the kicker huddles us up. He calls a play mortar kick, right. Which is simply a, a short, high arching kick to the right side of the field. And I don’t know why would, didn’t just call it kick, right? Because our kicker was so bad. Every kick was short and high arching, but yeah, anyway, you know, I’m pumped because I play on the right side of the field.
CN (03:23):
So it’s my opportunity to make an impact. That’s why I line up the boss kicked. I sprint down, feels hard as I possibly can go. I see an opening for me and my instincts are telling me that ball carrier, he’s in, try running through that gap. I gonna stop. I’m gonna drive my shoulder so hard through his legs. He’s gonna drop the ball. I go for it. I collide with him at full speed, full force, but I miss time my tackle by a split second, instead of getting my head in front of the ball, carry my head, cor collides, right with his knees in an instant, I was all feeling a movement for my I’m. Listening to the players, crashing to each other above me. Now the whistle blows, the pile clears off, but I can’t get up no matter how hard I try to push through my arms and onto the ground, nothing is working. I was completely conscious. Not in any pain, just couldn’t move. It felt like someone just flipped the power off to my body. And what I didn’t know at the time was I just suffered a severe spinal cord injury in my life was about to drastically change.
RV (04:39):
So the was the reason you weren’t any pain was just cuz you lost all feeling.
CN (04:46):
Yeah. So your spinal cord the, the nerve nervous system, it communicates with your brain. So pretty much it got almost completely severed where even all pain feeling, everything was disconnected temporarily from the neck down. So that’s why I couldn’t feel any pain, anything, no movement was because of the damage done to the spinal cord.
RV (05:11):
Wow. So, so what happens next? So they clearly, they wheel you off the field. You start going to doctors and getting tests and like when, when when’s the first time that you hear that you’re not gonna be able of the walk again.
CN (05:26):
Yeah. I’m flown out to Mayo clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Get x-ray all these tests done to get me ready for surgery. And it was right before surgery. I haven’t been asking questions. I’ve been too scared to ask, like what’s gonna happen because I wanted to make sure they had all their, all the information that they needed to give me the best answer possible. At least the most informed answer possible. And when I asked the surgeon right before I put the slate, you know, Hey, will I walk again? And in my mind that’s a huge compromise. I, I was, you know, praying and bargaining with God. Like, Hey, I will give up sports. I don’t need to play another sport in my life, which at the time, like that’s a huge deal. Like I, I was an athlete. That was my identity. I love competition.
CN (06:14):
I love competing and the weight room, everything involved with athletics. I love, and I could give that all up, but just let me walk. And when I ask him that I could just see in his face, the answer was no. And he just looks down at the ground and says, I don’t know. And then I’m put to sleep after that. And I, when he said that too, I just started crying. Like I lost it. I was like really holding it in trying to be tough, trying to be strong, trying to be optimistic that things are gonna be okay, it’s gonna work out because leading up to this point, everything always worked out for me. I never had gone through anything. Life altering, not even, not myself or even people close to me. It just wasn’t on my radar that something like this could happen to me. I thought it happened to people you read about in the newspaper, you watch on television, but not my life. I thought I was immune to that and it was just my world was just shattered in that moment. And then I wake up the next day blurry.
RV (07:17):
So how long were you, how long were you in surgery?
CN (07:21):
The surgery lasted about four hours. Wow. And then I, I wake up, you know, the next day, you know, groggy, blurry, eyed thinking. I just had the worst nightmare of my life. But then, you know, the surgeon comes in and confirms my worst nightmare is now my new reality. And he says, Chris, you have a 3% chance to ever move or feel below the neck. And that’s not a 3% chance to walk. That’s a 3% chance to move or to feel, to scratch and itch on your face to feed yourself. And it was just so surreal. I, I could hardly process it because yes, at this time I was walking now I was suiting up for my college football game. And then all of a sudden I’m lying in the hospital, paralyzed from my neck down with a 3% chance to ever move or feel again. And I’m.
RV (08:12):
And so you can’t move your, you can’t move your hands, your toes, you can’t raise your arm. You’re just completely still, but totally conscious and full mentally aware.
CN (08:22):
Yeah, completely. Wow. Like I know how to move my body. Like I know what it takes to, you know, move my hand in my face or to adjust my leg or pull the covers up. But like literally nothing would respond or work. I felt like I was ahead detached for my body and just looking at the rest of body, it was just a foreign object because I had no connection to it at all.
RV (08:48):
So the doctor tells you that. So that happens like within a day or two. And then, and then how long are you in the hospital? And like, when do you, when do you come home? Cuz I have to think it starts to really become real when you leave the hospital and like your whole life is different. I mean can’t shower, can’t eat, can’t get dressed.
CN (09:10):
Yeah. It was a, a slow than just kind of a grind from that moment on of I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get a little bit better. I’m gonna be part of that 3%. I won’t be that 97% who don’t recover from this. And so I just make that commitment of just understanding that, you know, your future will take care of itself when you take care of today. And I kept reminding myself that your future will take care of itself when you take care of today. And so I just kept trying to get a little bit better each and every day. And you know, by the, you know, grace of God and perseverance and grit, family and friends, I slowly started to make a recovery where I had some movement in my legs, some movement in my arms, unable to like walk independently or do much.
CN (09:55):
I depend independence wise. But I was inpatient for about four months outpatient for about three months. And that was all in Rochester, Minnesota, which is about three hours from my home. So when I officially made that move back home in Des Moines, Iowa, it was a huge transition like you’re suggesting going from, you know, your house, you know, my room was upstairs. So I I’ve never been back to my, my bedroom because I can’t it’s stairs. And just realizing all these obstacles that you have to navigate. And the way of life, you have to look at it from an accessibility mindset and of not just being able to breeze over opposite goals. So it was definitely a large change. But thankfully, you know, my parents were very encouraging. They, they pushed me to get outta my comfort zone and they weren’t gonna let me just, you know, stay home and you know, feel sorry for myself.
CN (10:50):
They got me out there and eventually I went back to college, actually the following fall and my buddies became my caregiver and my sister relocated to apartment just off campus to help with a huge transition. And then slowly started to kind of get my life back together. And, and that’s when I started to realize too, like, you know, happiness is not measured in steps, right there there’s people who can run, jump and swim who are unhappy. So, you know, clearly happiness has nothing to do with your fits strength or possession, everything to do with your mindset and your mental health. And I began to, to see those pieces as I kind of got my life back into a new routine.
RV (11:31):
How, how soon did you really embrace that? I mean like, I mean, there’s gotta be, I mean, have to feel like there’s that some there’s like this wave of hopelessness and despair, right. Has to be of like, oh my gosh, like I’m not gonna be running and jumping maybe ever again, maybe walking, never again to, to, to, to then going, well, that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy ever again. And realizing like what you just shared that like, there’s a lot of people who can do those things who are unhappy.
CN (12:05):
Absolutely. so it, wasn’t a flip of a switch. I’ll tell you that and know me talking about it might make it sound easy and it’s not for anybody who’s gone through something life altering, it, it takes time to kind of pick up the pieces and to learn a new, a new way of living and a new beginning really kind of restarting your life. And it, it took years actually for me to come to that conclusion that, you know, I can still live a meaningful life, you know, adversity and failure are a part of life. And if you try holding onto it, it’s gonna Rob you of your future. Now things will never be perfect, but just because you aren’t getting the results you want or living the life you dreamed of doesn’t mean you stop trying, or that’s not a life we’re living for.
CN (12:53):
And so by, you know, getting back out there, getting my education, being with my buddies, starting to date again, met Emily started my own foundation, started speaking. I began to see, you know, I could still live a meaningful life right from my wheelchair. And at first, when I was first injured and even those first couple years, I thought that would be impossible. Like for me to get my life back meant me getting back to walking on my own, no wheelchair. And so if I wasn’t gonna be walking, being in a wheelchair would mean failure. And that for some reason I thought that I would not be a good enough person or I would not be seen as valuable by being in a wheelchair. But I put in my self out there building friendships, relationships starting the business, getting back to others, serving others.
CN (13:42):
I begin to realize, you know, that’s, that was a lie. It’s not true. I was attached to this idea that you have to be walking to live a good life and it’s just not true. And I know it gets portrayed all the time though. I mean, I go out in public, I get P people all the time. I don’t hold it against them, but they’re always like, man, I feel so sorry for you. Oh my gosh, you’re in a wheelchair like, oh man, I, I can’t imagine like they’re, they’re very sympathetic. And I, cause they’re kind of projecting their own fears like onto me that I think about it all the time and that I’m miserable all the time and I’m not like I, I focus on what I can do and, and what people don’t fail to realize too, being in a wheelchair and having a spinal cord injury actually have some CRA perks to it.
CN (14:26):
And in fact, like a couple of my favorite perks is like, you can, there’s no standing in line. Like while people are waiting in line complaining that their feet hurt, their legs are tied. You know, I’m just chilling my chair. Like this is really, or like when you go somewhere, there’s a front row parking spot for like, you get the best parking now where I live in south Florida, it’s really competitive here for those parking spots. You, you hear little things like that and you can’t feel mosquito bytes. I can have 30 mosquitoes on my legs at a campfire now. I don’t feel a thing. It’s awesome. So there’s so many little things that you can find in your life to appreciate if you have the will. And that’s what I’ve really kind of develop the muscle for is focusing on what I can do.
CN (15:12):
Where are the areas that I can influence and make a change and, and not keep my attention on what I, I can’t control or what I, I can’t do. And that’s easier said than done. Obviously, like there are definitely moments where I’m just like, man, this sucks. Like I see my kids playing in the pool. I wanna jump in there. I wanna throw ’em around. I want to play catch with them with the baseball and teach. ’em How to swing a bat. There. There’s so many things, you know, like that are hard and frustrating, but I have to then just go back to okay, what kind of dad can I be? What, what kind of husband can I be? Not the one I wish I could be. You can still be a great dad, even though I’m, I’m not in the pool with him or I’m teaching, ’em how to throw a ball. And so there’s definitely things that you have to just embrace and accept, but that’s that’s life too, right there. There’s things that you have to just learn to let go of, if you wanna live a meaningful, purposeful life.
RV (16:08):
And you said that like the first year or so, was that, was it like a year or two to where you really started to come around? Cuz I can sense that just in talking to you that you, you know, you’re not unhappy, you’re really happy. You’ve got all these great friendships and you’ve got kids and a family, like you’re doing all these great things with your business. Is, is it, was it like a year or two to get to that point?
CN (16:30):
Yeah, it was, it was big, very gradual. You know, it is just little moments that just kept, you know, opening my eyes to that possibility of like, well maybe if I don’t walk, I’ll still be okay. And it takes time. It took, yeah, like I said, years, probably three or four years to really come to terms with that. Probably probably more like maybe four years to really come to terms with that like peacefully where I stopped holding onto this idea of, I must walk and cause I trained all the time I was putting in you know, even with full load of school credits, you know, sometimes six to eight hours of training on top of college and trying to do everything to live a college experience. Like I was obsessed with working out and trying to get my strength back and you know, I’m glad I did.
CN (17:28):
I’m glad I tried it cuz I can look back now and say, you know what? I gave it a try. I tried to get as much strength back as possible. And I, I brought myself a long ways, but it, it just wasn’t in the card. Like at some point you kind of realized Theios in the wall that you need to make a transition, right? You need to make a pivot. And that’s what I did. And I started to focus more on contributing back to others, serving others through my motivational speaking that I love to do. And through my foundation, the Chris Norton foundation, and then we, you know, began fostering and adopting. So I have a load of kids like seven kids right now, bro.
RV (18:03):
Wow, wow. Seven kids.
CN (18:05):
Yeah. And then like documentary and the books. And so I’m just trying to give back, serve others. I feel like I was called to do this and to use my story and my testimony to give people hope and to see the possibilities, even with the adversity that they’re facing, even when their lives have completely been flipped upside down, there is still a way forward. Even it’s not the way that you wanted to go.
RV (18:34):
Wow, man. What a, what an amazing perspective. Like, so, so walk us through like the, a little bit of your personal brand story. Like, so this happens to you. So like what year does this happen? And then is the first like real big development. They filmed you at graduation and that went viral. Was that kind of like the first like, whoa, my story is inspiring. A lot of other people,
CN (19:00):
It actually happened right when it took place with my injury. So my family when I was injured, a lot of people were messaging them. Like, what’s the updates? Like how, how Chris doing today? Like, is there any progress? And instead of messaging back individually, like a hundred people, they started what’s called like a caring bridge page. It’s pretty much just like an online blog set up for families who are updating others on a, when they’re in the hospital or something. So you don’t have to you know, like I said, message everyone individually. So they post updates on what I was doing, what the family was doing, the progress. And people began following that blog very closely. I think it had like 400,000 hits or something of people just following along this story and how people were inspired by my attitude that I was gonna beat the, and I was gonna get better and I wasn’t gonna quit.
CN (19:54):
And stop working and people were writing like, Hey, like I, I stopped going to church. I’m dealing with depression. And after, you know, hearing your story, it’s given the courage to, to get back out there to, to go back to church or to, to find a job or to pick up my, although it may feel broken at the moment. And so when you start reading these stories and you’re being told how, you know, just me trying to get better, I wasn’t trying to be an inspiration. I was just trying to get my life back. But when people are writing to you and saying like, they have a different perspective on life because of how you live yours, like, wow. Like that gave me motivation. That gave me more is cuz there were times when I wanted to give up on myself where I wanted to quit.
CN (20:37):
But when I thought about the other people who were looking to me for inspiration and hope, I didn’t want to give up on them. I, I wanted them to find their own courage through me. And so that’s why I kept going a lot of cases and why I keep even going today. Just feel like there’s an opportunity to inspire others. So that’s all to say that next year. Maybe like a small group, like an FCA group at a high school, like, Hey, can you share your testimony with us? Like how do you stay positive and get through your, your challenges? And so I started just sharing my story just very off hand, just from the hip and people were leaning in, they were listening. They, they wanted to know what I had to say about life and staying hopeful and how to get through adversity.
CN (21:24):
And I liked it. I liked the fact that they, they were leaning in, they wanted to know more and I could, you know, kind of captivate an audience and entertain them and, and give them the tools to, to improve their lives. And like this feels good. And then someone told me, Hey, you know, you can make money by being a motivational speaker. Like what you can get paid to just beat the people on a stage. I thought that was just like a, like an honor or like a privilege just to get up there. And it’s like a free thing. And like, no, like this is something people do for a living full time. And if it’s something you you want to do, you could, you should definitely pursue it. And ever since I heard that and I knew I could, you know, make a living from helping others and living out my purpose, like sign me up. And so I started just speaking everywhere. I could, I mean, anybody who would listen and doesn’t matter how small the group was or how far away I, I wanted to share my story and testimony and it just kind of snowballed into, you know, a business that can take care of my whole family and live comfortably.
RV (22:27):
So yeah. So is the, so with those fairly early speaking engagements, like you, you start out doing ’em for free. How many do you think you did before you started charging? And did you just kind of like, did most of the people find you just from hearing your story from other people and they came to you or did you have some way of contacting them and finding them?
CN (22:47):
Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. So some of it, it was like go for the low hanging fruit, like my old high school and elementary and middle school, like get to speak to them. That’s pretty easy entry point or just a local elementary or church group. I just tried to reach out to as many people that I knew who had a group and that who would want bring in speakers. I, I did a ton of rotary clubs cause I know they would bring in guests and I would say, you know, 95% of those were all free. Just I knew I needed the practice. I needed the at bats. It wasn’t something that just came natural to me. I felt comfortable on stage, but I didn’t have a, I just like charismatic, entertaining way of doing it unless I practiced and worked on it.
CN (23:35):
I started videotaping every single speech so I could go back and watch it as painfully as I was. I knew I had to watch the film and then I, you know, started hiring coaches and people that could help, you know, transform my message and get me even further. And when I realized that, you know, to get more speeches, you have to have a, a killer speech. Like that’s how you get more. It’s, it’s a referral business. And I didn’t wanna depend on my viral moments or my story to, to get me in the door. I wanted my presentation and the transformation that can occur from it to be what opens a door for places. And I knew that was gonna be what would sustain my business long term. So think I’ve gotten good advice, good people around me to kind of point in the right direction and to get it to where he is today. But I don’t wanna my story to be well, it is, you know, what definitely draws people in to wanna hire me. It’s not what lifts my business, it’s the, the presentation and the, the time I feel that I put into it to make it very entertaining and humorous and, and uplifting.
RV (24:50):
And, and so, so talk us through the how does the Netflix thing happen? How, like how, how does a documentary come about? Was that something that you kind of went out and, and were seeking or did somebody come to you and like, what are the mechanics of getting a documentary film and putting it together? And how long does that take? Like the whole, the whole thing?
CN (25:11):
Yeah, it was a long process. It was after my graduation walk, video went viral, a small production company at a Dallas. The photo philanthropy was the name and they loved sharing, uplifting, inspiring stories. Now first they just offered, Hey, we would love, love to give you a gift by just filming your wedding. We would come there, they have, you know, professional cameras and a crew and capture it, maybe put together like a little short, inspirational video for people, but then they just kind of snowballed from that to let’s do a full below documentary. They done two before, so this would be their third one. And it was just the right timing. And so we began, you know, filming, promoting it even before the walk actually. So we named the movie seven yards before I could even walk seven yards. That was a little scary.
RV (26:05):
Wow.
CN (26:06):
But I knew it, it gave me something you for gave me something to really work on. But yeah, it’s a lot of so they’re a small production house. It’s not like a big Hollywood thing where they have a bunch of funding and money to do this or that basically what we had to do. It was a nonprofit. So basically we’d have to fundraise then we’d film a little bit. And then once money ran out, we stopped, you know, try to get some fundraising, get some money. And then once we did, we go out and do some more filming, so really stop and go stop and go strung together over years, really. Wow. Filming in 2017 and the movie came out in 2021 to kind of give you an idea of four years in the making wow. Before it happened.
CN (26:54):
But so we, we kept shooting, kept filming. They put it together, found an agent that would, you know, get, be able to get in the doors of somewhere like a Netflix and apple TV and Amazon prime. And thankfully by the, you know, Chris of God that Netflix wanted it. And so we were able to get it in there. And then at first I’m thinking it’s not a Netflix original. So, you know, some tie titles on their platform have the, the end in the corner and that’s a Netflix original film. They, they give the most marketing and promotion and, and back backing. Well, so this one’s just an independent title. So my mind it’s gonna get on there. It’s gonna get buried. Netflix is loaded with films, docu memories, all these things like no one’s ever gonna see it. And then it just exploded. Like it was on trending and popular. It started to receive thousands of messages of just how encouraged inspired they were from this film. So I was so blown away by the response to that, that film. And I’m so glad that it could get out there and really make a difference to many people.
RV (28:10):
That’s so that’s really, really cool. How much does it cost to, like how much fundraising, like what does it cost to film a documentary? Is it like millions of dollars? Is it a couple hundred thousand dollars?
CN (28:21):
It, I mean, it kind of depends on what you’re using and the different elements to it, but this one would be like 250,000, I think all in when you pay all the people involved, the,
RV (28:35):
All the editing, the equipment, the rentals, the travel, like it’s a ton of stuff,
CN (28:40):
Ton of stuff. And they were able to get it like a 250,000, which is considering, is on Netflix or what’s out there. That is a very low budget film.
RV (28:51):
Wow. That’s really, really cool, man. So like so what now? So what, what next? So you have seven kids. So you normally got married. You’ve, you’ve adopted seven kids
CN (29:05):
Adopted six and then we’re fostering one right now. So we have fostered a total of 19 kids in all. Wow. So that’s something that was a, a passion of my wife that she then passed on to me and helped open my eyes to all the kids who don’t feel loved, who are coming from abusive homes. And they’re either put with a fam foster family, they’re put into group homes, which is, you know, they used to call it orphanages. And now it’s, they’re called group homes. And so we, we just breaks our heart and we hear these stories of these kids needing a home and a place to go. They don’t feel loved and wanted and like they belong. And so try to help them to see their value and how loved they are by by us and by God and everybody it’s been a really neat calling and it’s really made our lives just gives us more me, these kids.
CN (30:01):
And, you know, we kind of went into it. We’re, we’re gonna help them, but you know, they, they give just as much back to you just having them in your lives, they’re all very special and, and unique. So that’s been an incredible thing. That’s and then what’s next though. Yeah. Is sorry, add that too is yeah. Now I’m gonna do a an unscripted TV show now with Netflix of just how to help people find a way forward of how can you pick up the pieces of something life altering and continue down the road. So kind of like a, a fixer upper, but for the soul really is how we are calling it. So we’d like to get this show up and going and find a home for it. But that’s kind of my, my next project outside of speaking, like speaking’s always gonna be, I feel my number one thing. I love doing it, but I also want to get, do some more TV stuff and try to do something reality. TV wise, that’s meaningful and purposeful, and it’s gonna help people’s lives.
RV (31:06):
Yeah. I never, I guess I never even realized that that was how cuz that’s how the book business works. Right? You create a book proposal, get a literary agent, litera agent takes a proposal, shops it to publishers. They give you an advance and then you sell a bunch of copies are not your advance. And then you get royalties, I guess that that’s probably the same way a documentary is. They pay you some amount of money and then based on the streams or something, you get, you earn royalties after that.
CN (31:29):
There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. But that’s probably the basic way is you, you come up with a project and an idea, and then you hope that you get initial funding from like a big streaming platform, like a Netflix where they say, yeah, we want this. And then they’ll give you a budget. They’ll give you directors, producers, they’ll give you kind of a team of that. They kind of want you to work with, and then they let you kind of run with it or you come to them with a finished product. And you try to get that onto their, their platform with when when’s already finished. So there’s different ways to kind of go about it, but yeah, very similar to a book.
RV (32:11):
Yeah. Well that’s awesome, man. So you’re still like just speaking and, and maybe reality TV. Some, I love the fixer upper for your soul. Kind of an idea. I mean, there’s so many people that are hurting and broken and it just, it seems like you’re really just drawn to doing that work.
CN (32:31):
Yeah. I, like I told you about the kind of that transformation for me of thinking, oh my gosh, I’m in a wheelchair. Like my life is now over. I can’t do the things that I want to do. Like the fun has stopped. I’m not gonna be able to do anything exciting. Well, that’s not true. I, you know, I’ve been skiing and I’ve gone on jet skis and concerts and traveling what snorkeling and, you know, scuba diving and like there’s so many things, hiking, mountain climb, like there’s so many things I’ve been able to do and have a family and start a business. There’s that? I’m not like some I’m not cut from a different cloth. Like I’m just I’m from a small town in Iowa, just like, there’s nothing special about me other than just, I just try to focus on the possibilities to try to see way forward.
CN (33:19):
And, and thankfully too, I’ve had good people to help me too, kind of open my eyes to what is possible. And I want to help be that person for more people who feel like, oh my gosh, this life altering thing. Life is over. It stops now. Cause I’m not living the life that I pictured that it would look like. And so I want to break that bear for them and, and with a team of people to show them what is possible and empower them to, to continue to move forward. So that’s again a passion project now that I’m working on that there’s a lot of work ahead, but something that I’m hoping to get going,
RV (33:58):
Where do you want people to go, Chris, if they wanna connect with you and kind of follow your journey, like what’s the best place for them to, to keep up with you these days?
CN (34:05):
Yeah. I mean go to my website, Chris norton.org to learn even more about me and connect, but Instagram and Facebook are probably my two primary places that I update and, and share what’s going on.
RV (34:22):
Wow, man. It, it really is an inspiring story. And thank you for choosing to have that attitude and for continuing to see what’s possible. And cuz it is, it, it inspires me and I know it’s gonna inspire a ton of people, listen to this. And and I can sense you’re just getting started in the impact that you’re gonna have globally with, with sharing your story. So we’re, we’re grateful for, for you and your family and your wife and man, we just wish you the best stay, stay connected with us and, and let us know how we can help and just keep going, brother.
CN (34:59):
Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate that RO and like I said, it’s be here. Talk with you. I’ve always followed you and looked up to you as a, as a man, as a, as a business owner, husband, father, all those things. And so it’s great to be able to speak with you today.
Ep 241: Beating Your Inner Critic with Dr. Margie Warrell | Recap Episode
RV (00:01):
We tend to fail more from fear and humidity than we do from over daring. That was one of my favorite lines from the interview that I did recently with Dr. Margie today I’m breaking down doing the podcast recap of that episode, sharing with you my top three highlights, um, for on that interview, which was powerful and it affected me. And so I’m excited to share that with you. And, uh, before I dive into that, I wanna let you know of a little bit of a, of a forthcoming change, a little modification that we’re making here with, um, the podcast. It, it’s gonna roll out here over a few weeks, but, um, I’m gonna be doing, uh, this recap by myself and then the next couple by myself, and then starting here in like four or five episodes what’s gonna happen is we’re still gonna do the podcast twice a week, but I will do an interview.
RV (00:54):
And then the, the recap of that interview will be on the same episode as that interview. And then our second episode, every we’ll be AJ doing an interview by herself, uh, with the guest and doing her own recap of her own interviews. So just wanted to let you know about that kind of exciting slight modification just to the way that the episodes are gonna be happening. And so for the next few weeks, you’re gonna see me, um, just by myself or be here in for me just by myself. So, um, on with the recap for this, uh, episode, this interview with Dr. Margie, um, I loved this. This was something that I personally needed and I, I had lots and lots of, of, of great takeaways. And the first takeaway is to what I was just talking about is you have to think of things as an experiment there, like your business is something that you have to view as an experiment instead of like it’s a success or a failure.
RV (01:55):
If you view it as an experiment, it, it puts you in this, this mindset kind of more of the right mindset that it takes to be successful because you go, oh, I’m gonna try things, knowing that some of the things aren’t gonna work and the reason, and knowing that that’s part, that’s part of the plan, like, you know, ahead of time, that it is by design, that you’re doing trial and error, and you’re figuring things out as you go versus this mindset, this mentality of living in this world of like, I have to be successful and everything I do has to work all the time. Otherwise it’s not gonna work. And it’s, it’s kind of this, this, this ultimatum like this, this very ultimate destination that we place ourselves in and this pressure that we put on onto ourselves and, and onto the people around us, like the people that work with us and the vendors and the contractors of like this must work or else, right?
RV (02:51):
Like, or else it’s over or else it’s done or else, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be lost. I’m gonna fail. I’m going, I’m gonna let everybody down. And instead of kind of operating with, I, I guess that sort of definitive, it’s saying, Hey, let me view this as an experiment, I’m gonna constantly be iterating. I’m gonna constantly be adapting. I’m gonna be evolving. I’m gonna be trying things and seeing what works and then modifying from there. And that really hit me hard because especially if you’re a, if you’re a perfectionist, like, like I am and I’ll go ahead and claim AJS one too. Um, even though she’s not here, I, I, I feel pretty confident at this point, um, that I could say that comfortably with her and she wouldn’t take issue with it. So that if you’re a, if you’re a perfectionist, you are, are likely to be overly cautious because everything needs to be perfect.
RV (03:48):
Everything needs to be planned, everything. Um, you, you operate from this, this, this very calculated standpoint of like, I want all these things to work the, but, but to what Dr Margie’s point was in that interview, which really hit me, was most of us are, are overly cautious, right? Like the fear being an entrepreneur is, is even like, oh gosh, you know, I don’t know, like that seems like a big risk. And, and, and to some extent it is, uh, certainly riskier than maybe that you a more risk than the average, just the average citizen might take on. But the, that is what holds us back is is that just that kind of fear and that, that need for certainty and precision and accuracy, and for knowing what’s gonna happen before it happens. That is what holds a us back from being able to take the chances, take the risks, make the changes that are really going to, to unlock exponential growth.
RV (04:52):
And, you know, as, as she, she said, we fail far more from timid than we do from over daring. I think that line will stick with me personally from Dr. Margie and, you know, so treat it as an experiment, treat your business, your brand as, as an experiment, rather than like a test that you have to get, you have to get, right. And that there’s like a right or wrong answer. So I thought that was really good. Um, my second takeaway was something that we talked a lot about at brand builders, and it was edifying to me to hear her say the same thing. And this was what she said, you know, verbatim. I had to demonstrate my value before people would pay me. And so we were talking specif about how do you, how do you start your career as a speaker, right. Um, and we tell people all the time, whether you wanna be a professional speaker, like a paid speaker or not, it, it doesn’t matter.
RV (05:54):
Giving free presentations is a huge piece of marketing. It is the, it is the fastest way to take someone from a complete stranger to a lifelong fan is like this, this, you know, a presentation, a, a, a training class. And there’s different things that you call it. You could call it a, a podcast interview. You could call it a webinar. You could call it a video funnel of, you know, three short videos. You could call it a, a, a seven day challenge funnel and have, you know, 10, seven minute videos. Like there’s all these things that you could call it. But the fact of the matter is, is that that people have to have a chance to sample you. They have to have a chance to try you before they buy. They have to, they have to get exposed to you before they can feel comfortable purchasing from you.
RV (06:44):
If they don’t know you, if they don’t recognize you, if they’ve never heard of you. And the fact of, of the matters that most personal brands, like most of us, aren’t that well known. We’re, we’re not, you know, we’re not celebrities we’re, we don’t have millions. And, and the followers, like that’s rare that we’re working with somebody who is in that category. We do have a few clients that are that way, but, but for the vast majority of us, and, you know, perhaps for you is going, how do I give people a chance to sample me before they buy? I internally with all of our, our brand builders, monthly members, we talk about this, this concept that I call chicken on a stick, you know, it’s basically like, it’s exactly when you go to the food court. And you know, when you walk around the food quarter, if you go to whole foods or the grocery store or whatever, and there’s people sampling new food, and it’s always new food.
RV (07:35):
Why? Because you’ve because you don’t yet trust that you haven’t had friends tell you about it. You’ve never bought it. It’s new. And so what do they do? They give you a sample, a piece of chicken on a stick. They say, here, taste this. And, and they know that that is the, the most powerful mechanism that they can, they can leverage to take you from. I’ve never heard of you. I don’t know what this for brand is. I don’t know what this flavor is. I don’t know what this, what this style or this taste is, or, or this product at all to go, oh yeah. Okay. I’ll buy that because you have this meat experience. It is the exact same. It is the exact same thing with your personal brand. People have to have a chance to see ample you, they have to, they have to hear you talk, right?
RV (08:24):
The number one white people always go, well, how do I become a paid speaker, R hall of fame speaker? Like, how do you become a hall of fame speaker? Like, how do you get paid to speak? And the answer is you go speak for free until somebody walks up to you and says that wasn’t credible. I have an event coming up. What’s your fee. I would like you to have. I’d like to have you come speak at my event because they’re sampling you. They’re seeing you. They’re they’re. Um, and, and it’s the whole concept of content marketing in general, but this applies to speaking and it applies to whatever you’re selling. Like, you might be a doctor selling surgeries. You might, you, you might be a, a chiropractor. You, you might be a health food coach. You might be, you know, a consultant of any type, the whole value of social media and podcasting.
RV (09:10):
And all this digital marketing is for people to have a chance to sample you. How, how can you incorporate sample into your business? How can people sample you? And social media is, you know, that’s basically our entire social media strategy and it works right. Is you, you save the best for first. Like we say so often because I’m demonstrating my value so that people can have confidence, but four, they pay me and that’s a switch you have to flip, and you have to constantly remind yourself of as you’re, as you’re building your personal brand, and you’re building your business, uh, going how I have to give value. First, I have to give first, before they give to me, it, it’s not a chicken or the egg. It might feel like a chicken or the egg, but it’s not. It’s very clear people. You need to think of your customers as people who pay you in rears, right?
RV (10:02):
So there’s it. When it comes to paying your bills, you can, you can pay in forwards, or you can pay in rears. So you, you, you know, you pay to pay in forwards means you pay before the service comes to you and you pay ahead of time to pay in res is to say, you’re, you’re paying for a service that you have, you have already experienced. So when it comes to selling yourself, your business, your personal brand, however, you’re monetizing. The thing that you’re doing, you have to realize that people are always paying in res meaning you’re, they’re experiencing you first. And then they’re paying you after. Even if they’re technically paying you for a service that you haven’t yet delivered. It’s kinda like, even though people are hiring me for a, they’re hiring me to give a speech at a future event, they’re really paying after they’ve had some experience with me.
RV (10:59):
They’ve either read my book or they’ve seen my Ted talk, or they watch me most often. I mean, the number one way that people hire me is because they saw me speak at an event. They said that was incredible. That was, you know, worth the money. I’ll pay you to come. I want you to come do the things. So they’re, they’re paying in res demonstrate your value before you ask people to pay, how do you, how do you do this? And here’s the thing. Every company in the world, you know, right now is dealing with virtual and remote work. They need to train their people and motivate them and manage them. And they’re all like virtual or at least part Artley virtual. So they they’re all open to this idea of going, how can I inject training and wisdom and inspiration into my audience? Like, there’s never been a more ripe opportunity or ripe time for you to come infuse your inspiration, your education, your entertainment, your, your encouragement into companies in a way that they would, they will sample you for free.
RV (12:04):
And then from there, that is how they hire you. So just, you can never hear that enough. And, and you years, so many times, so many of our different guests have talked about it, but for Dr. Margie to just like nail that, you know, right between the eyes, as in terms of how she built her speaking career, I just thought was super relevant. And it applies to whether you’re a coach consultant or your professional service provider, or, you know, whatever. Even if you’re trying to just get yourself a raise at work, you have to go, let me volunteer for a project. Let me show you what I can do and earn my way into a promotion or earn my way into a raise, demonstrate the value the money comes after. And most people have that kind of, that totally flipped. Um, and then the third, the third big takeaway for me, which is another kind of fundamental reminder.
RV (12:54):
And it’s another thing you can just never hear enough, which is don’t lose to that little voice inside of your head. Don’t lose to that little voice that tells you you’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You, you’re not capable. You have to realize that little voice exists in all of us. And most people who lose in life, they don’t lose to the fact that they, they actually weren’t those things. They lose to the little voice who said they were those things before they ever even tried before they ever even gave it a shot before they ever even had in that bat or took the swing or took a shot. And they lost to the little voice. Most of us don’t lose to what happens in our life. We lose to the idea of what might happen before it ever even happens before it ever has a chance to succeed.
RV (13:52):
That little voice is holding people. Hostage. It is, is it is keeping them from shining their light as Dr. Margie said. And, and that that voice is, is just the voice of fear that, that, that voice was planted in you for protection to keep you safe from danger. But there’s a big difference between danger in fear. Danger is something that could actually threaten your livelihood, but the brain doesn’t delineate really so much that from fear, which is something that is new and uncertain and being successful is about stepping into things that are new and uncertain and outside of comfort. And so if you ever wanna to be successful at anything, you have to learn to conquer that little voice until you conquer that voice, you can’t do anything. You’ll be held hostage and captive to your imagination, working in the wrong direction, which is how I describe fear.
RV (14:54):
I say that fear is your creativity working in the wrong direction. And it doesn’t mean your, your, it doesn’t mean that your something is wrong with you. It means that you are perfectly functioning human, that your brain is trying to protect you from something that could be dangerous. But, but very few of the things that we are pursuing in terms of goal are, are dangerous. They’re just unknown. That’s mostly what fear is. It is, it is the unknown. It is the uncertain. And yet you have to learn to conquer that step. And if you can’t defeat that voice, you don’t have a cheat ants. You’re losing the battle before you, before you even step on the, on the field, right? Like, so we, we treat that, uh, I love what Dr. Margie said when she said, we treat that little voice as if it’s the truth, but it’s not the truth. It’s just your creativity working in the wrong direction. It’s just your brain’s defense mechanism to, you know, that is there appropriately to prevent you from danger, which is inappropriately preventing you from doing something new, and that is standing in your way, but to become successful in life, to achieve your goals, to change the world, to do the impossible, to have the thing you have never done will require you to decide and defeat that little voice over and over and over again.
RV (16:27):
Our hope is that one of the reasons that you come to this podcast every single week is to, to get that encouragement, to help you overcome that little voice, to get you that encouragement that says, Hey, you’ve got permission around here to experiment and to get that encouragement to go, Hey, you’ve you, you’ve got permission to go give value into the world before you ask people to pay. These are three of, of probably the most timeless tenants and, and most, most important principles of the, of all the kind of concepts that we talk around at brand builders captured right here in this interview with Dr. Margie, as a living example of someone who embodies these things. And, um, we’re honored to call her a friend and a client and to hold her up and say, you know, look, look what this woman has done. Like look at the career that she has built for herself all by, by treating it as an experiment, being willing to demonstrate her value first and learning to conquer that little voice of fear. Our invitation is for you to do the same. Hey, if you would share this podcast with somebody who you think needs to hear it and keep coming back week after week, we’re so excited that you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential old, personal brand.
Ep 240: Beating Your Inner Critic with Dr. Margie Warrell
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
I am always amazed at the people that we get a chance to meet at brand builders. And every once in a while, we just meet somebody who just kind of captures us and goes, wow, how do we not know each other? And how do we not know each other yet? And that is how I feel about Dr. Margie war, who you’re about to meet. So she is a five times bestselling author. She is a Forbes columnist. She’s a world renowned advisor on leadership and human potential. And she works with companies like NASA and Google and Deloitte and Berkshire Hathaway. And she’s a speaker. She does consulting and really has just spent 25 years doing research and kind of just working in the field to help people boost their, their courage and elevate performance and accelerate their growth. So she also lectures at Columbia and Georgetown, and she’s been on, you know, the New York times and several other success magazine today show and is, is just awesome. And we got a chance to meet here, not that long ago, visa brand builders group. And as I got to learn more about her, I felt like you needed to hear her story. So Dr. Margie to the show.
MW (02:03):
Rory it is awesome to be with you always
RV (02:08):
So tell us your story about how you got started in, in this space. You know, I, I, and, and correct me if I’m wrong. So the way that we understand now is like a, a big part of your business model is from speaking and you know, driving revenue in the last several years from speaking, but you also traveled a bunch internationally. You were a mom, like you had a lot of things going on that I think people often would go if I had those things going on, I probably couldn’t build the kind of career that you’ve been able to build. So give us a little bit of that background.
MW (02:46):
Yeah, well, I, I, I think I, as you can probably tell from my accent, I’m from the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep south
MW (03:44):
You’ve, you’ve worked in business. You, you should think about coaching. And I, I remember laughing and saying, oh my gosh, do you know how uncoordinated I am? It’s just, I’m so not athletic. I don’t know why you think I would be a good coach.
MW (04:31):
And so it was really, I was, everyone knew me as the stay at home mom with four kids. And for me, it was, how do I, how do I do what I really wanna do when no one knows who I am? And so that’s where actually I started speaking for free anywhere and everywhere that would have me, ah, to try and get some coaching clients. And and so I was just super excited if people would sign up for a free coaching session at the end of me giving a talk at like, you know, it could have been a club or it was American business women’s association, or companies would do free brown bag lunches, and I would speak anywhere and everywhere. And really over time, I, I came to realize the thread that was running through so much of what I would talk about.
MW (05:17):
And part of it was about balance and having difficult conversations and pursuing what lights you up and saying no to what doesn’t. And I realized the thread that was running through it all was, was having more courage and daring to be braver and take a risk and risk rejection and put ourselves out there. And so that led to my first book, which was called find your courage. And it was very much an act of courage for me at the time to write it. I had four kids, seven and under, and I, I wrote it in nap times in the afternoons. And and I had a huge voice in my head that was very loud often saying, who the hell do you think you are to write a book? You know, you’re just, you didn’t get a great education in rural Australia, et cetera. But it was really me, I guess, staring to make a bet on myself and, and, and thinking, you know, I don’t wanna look back one day and think I wished I’d been braver. So that’s kind of the, that was the start of the journey that love, that led me to where I am now.
RV (06:22):
I mean, with, I mean, and I think there’s lots of, I mean, lots of people have those kinds of things. And I mean, four kids is no joke. I mean, keeping, keeping track of four kids and be like, I’m gonna write a book in my spare time, which is nap time. Which, you know, if you have four kids getting a, all four of ’em asleep at the same time might last, you like 17 minutes, if you’re lucky. Oh,
MW (06:41):
No. I mean, it was threats and bribes. Can I just be clear, you stay in your room for one hour until the bell goes, you know, like
RV (06:49):
Yeah. But so you started that now. I, I, I rarely wanted to highlight cuz this is, you know, part of what we teach at at brand builders, you know, is you gotta go speak for free. I mean, that like, that’s how it starts. You just gotta go speak for free and get people a chance to sample you. So that’s interesting to hear that part of your story. I mean, everybody, I know that is a successful speaker. Like that’s how they started, like you just out there speaking. So I wanna talk about, so you started as coaching business us then became an author and then leveraged off that to get your, your speaking gigs. Is that how you got your first speaking gigs too, was just speaking for free until someone asked you to, if you can
MW (07:27):
Hire you. Yeah. I mean the book, the book came later, honestly, I couldn’t even have con I mean, I think I, I really lack confidence. I had a lot of self-doubt. It’s probably why I spoken so much about self-doubt because I, I doubted myself so much. So the speaking was how I got coaching clients. The book definitely came afterward. But yeah, the speaking was really crucial part of that all. And I hear, sometimes people say, oh, never speak for free. And you know, if you’ve come from being in some big role, you’ve already got some stellar reputation and you are well, you’re already an established brand and entity. Okay. Maybe that will work for you and great, but I would never have got anywhere. Had I been waiting on someone to pay me from the beginning? Cuz no one was gonna pay me cuz no one knew the value that I had.
MW (08:18):
I had to demonstrate at value. And that came from speaking for free. One was demonstrating the insight I had as a coach. People could go, oh, you know what? She’s got some, she’s got some wisdom and some expertise and some ideas that will be valuable to me. And I, and I like her, you know, it’s like kind of establishing that like this is someone that I would trust. And then over time, obviously the more I spoke, I started to actually develop a skill in speaking and kind of tapped into a latent talent that I honestly a gift. I didn’t know I had to be to be truthful. And so
RV (08:53):
How did you get the first, like when you first got paid to speak, was that basically referrals from people who had seen you
MW (09:00):
Speak at that was so, I mean the first time I ever spoke was at my kids’ preschool and then, you know, I, I had a coach, I had a coach. Yeah. And like two people showed up. But the woman who ran the preschool and the cleaning lady, so it was it was very humble or beginning, but the first paid speaking engagement one of my early clients, very early clients and I, I didn’t charge a lot of money. She worked for a big consulting firm and she had said, would you come in and speak there as part of a brown bag lunch, which was free. So I went in there and I spoke to working moms on work, life balance, and someone there was from HR and they said, we’ve got an international women’s day event coming up. We’re looking for a speaker. We would love you to come. We’ve got a, you know, how much do you charge? And I had no idea about fees and I remember saying R how’s $200. Nice. And she was so quick to say, yeah, that sounds great. And I remember thinking, I think, I, I think I went too low
RV (10:03):
MW (10:07):
But then someone was there and then, you know, I mean, and, and I, all of the paid speaking came from all of the unpaid speaking and then us the book amplified it. And then a lot of media when my first book came out and then, you know, it’s a ripple effect. Right. And you can’t, it’s easy to go. Well, it was one thing I did, but it was, I wrote for a women’s magazine for free. And then someone there connected me into Forbes and I got my own and I started writing for Forbes. And then I ended up with my own column and then, you know, so, you know, it was, and then I landed on the today show and then it was one thing after another, but there wasn’t one clear recipe. I couldn’t say, do this, then do this. It was just continually doing things that I hoped would, you know, make an impact and over time sure enough, you know, all of those little things, those daily strokes of effort, bam, you know, you get to another level
RV (11:02):
Mm-Hmm
MW (12:00):
I think you’ve gotta give yourself permission not to get it perfectly right. And to take risks and to try things and not have them land brilliantly. You know, you, you don’t know where everything and you are going to iterate and you’re gonna learn and you’re gonna evolve as you go along. And I think a mistake I see people making is thinking that they have to have the perfect plan and the perfectly the perfect clarity even. And yes, it’s great having a lot of clarity and it’s great having some one like you and the brand builders group to provide a roadmap, but still what works for one person isn’t gonna work exa you can’t copy and paste everything. We we’re all different. We, we have different things that we are good at and that we like to do. And I think give yourself permission to experiment and to iterate and to evolve as you move forward, because you’re gonna learn, well, this works for me, but this doesn’t work and that might work for the Margie, but it’s, it’s just not me.
MW (13:02):
Not everyone. I started out coaching, as I said. And I I’ve got friends that have been coaching for 25 years and they’re like, Margie, I couldn’t think of anything worse than speaking. It’s just not my thing.
RV (13:46):
And just kind of the, I hear you saying kind of like the mindset of approaching it as like yeah. Who cares? What happens? Just an experiment, like just kind of like, let’s see, let’s just see what happens and kind of go from there versus all of the pressure of like, it has to be perfect and dialed in and, and if it doesn’t cuz then it’s like, if it doesn’t work, it’s never gonna work. Like I, I, I’m not gonna work cuz we’ve had so much pressure.
MW (14:08):
Yeah. It’s like pressure, you know what? I tried that and you know what, it didn’t land brilliantly, but what did you learn from it? You know, I always looking for, what is the learning? How do I take that learning? And you know, I remember early on Roy, I was living in, in Dallas, Texas and I met someone and she said, oh Margie, you should be the expatriate wife coach, cuz I was a foreigner living in the us and I could coach other women who are wives. And, and I remember thinking, she’s like, you need to find your niche. And I was like, it just didn’t feel right. So sometimes people are gonna tell you what you need to do. And you know, I say get lots of advice and get it from people who know their stuff. Like honestly you are, you’re a great example of that, but not all advice is gonna be the right advice for you. And and I think that’s important, but wait, wait,
RV (14:58):
You mean not all advice for me is gonna be the right advice for you. I I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding guys.
MW (15:05):
I’m arguing your advice. Rory is about as good as it gets, but I, and, and of course you, you do it with in a way that obviously allows people to make it feel congruent, but I tell you what, there are a lot of experts out there. I mean, when I, I, I do experts in that can kind of give you their five point plan and it might not be congruent for you. And I think I think just being authentic is really important. And I think today, I mean, you guys talk about trust a lot. We want to deal with people that we can trust and who are real and authentic and not some overly curated version veneer that you go, well, who is it? Who is that really that person? And I think being congruent is super important and just being real and
RV (15:59):
Mm-Hmm
MW (16:36):
Well, all of us can be timid at times. Of course, all of us can be everything at times we can all be bold and brave and we can all be timid and overly cautious. And I believe that humidity is, is very prevalent in a, in the world in which we live because we live in a, in a, in a climate of fear, in a culture that actually sort of feeds and, and feeds on fear and fuels a lot of it and fuels a lot of self doubt and fuels a lot of timid and humidity drives people to hold back for our taking actions that would actually serve them that would help them to learn and to grow and to open new doors of opportunity and build new connections. And so we tend to fail far more from timidity than we do from over daring.
MW (17:33):
And timid in a sense is very much, much over caution. We’re being overly cautious, we’re holding back and you could say, oh, well, it’s a personality trait, but ultimately it is. It’s a decision that we make often unconsciously to, to not take an action because we are worried about the consequences of it. And often we discount the cost of timid. There’s a steep, hidden tax that comes with timid that we’re often not present to because it’s not immediate, it’s really dramatic or obvious, but we pay that tax over time in our lives because we don’t try things. We don’t experiment. We don’t put ourselves out there. We don’t try and write the book or approach someone and, or give the talk or, or whatever it is. And that really, we don’t know what doors didn’t open, but I, I really, the reason I have a passion for helping people overcome the bias toward timidity is because I see it holding potential hostage and keeping people from really, I mean, you could say shining their light, you know, really living the biggest lives, they’re capable of living. And, and ultimately a lot of people end up languishing. They kind of get stuck procrastinating. They get stuck making excuses and settling and selling themselves short. And not only do they miss out, but everyone misses out
RV (19:00):
Mm-Hmm
MW (19:28):
A AB couldn’t. Yes, that is right. And it is funny. And I, and I shared with you how, for me even starting out, it was a little voice in my head saying, who do you think you are, was like to give a talk to start honestly, a coaching business. I was like, who am I to even have my own business? And who am I to write a book? Who am I to, you know, do television or know in the more recent years do my PhD, et cetera. And I’ve just learned to identify that voice as a voice. It’s not who I am. It’s just fear. And timidity is just one expression of fear and not to give it power. Cuz too often we give that voice of Tim power call the shots it’s it’s in the driver’s seat and it doesn’t have to be that way.
MW (20:16):
I mean, that’s where courage comes into it. Courage is the decision to take action in the presence of perceived or real risks. You might fail. You mightn’t write the most brilliant book that’s ever been written. You might give a spare each and it mightn’t be brilliant. You might try something and it mightn’t be the best investment, but how will you ever know if you don’t try and how will you ever get better at it? If you don’t give yourself permission to not be brilliant starting out. And I think to your point, Rory, it’s not the barriers, the external obstacles around us that hold us back. It is the belief systems that we are buying into and the ones that fuel that timidity. And so, you know, at the end of the day, there comes a moment of choice and go, who is it I choose to be and where am I letting, where am I letting my fear of not having what it takes, keep me from taking action. And that’s, that’s having the courage to take action despite our innate, you know, timid
RV (21:19):
Mm-Hmm
MW (21:46):
Yeah. You know, I often think give it a name, you know, and you know, you’re, you’re in a chicken little, right. You know, and in, in my book, you’ve got this, I, chapter two is doubt your doubts and, and doubt your doubts is really doubting that, that, that voice, that, that, that shows up and, and fuels that ity. And we treat those little negative noises and those doubting voices that in a chicken little as though it’s the truth and it’s not the truth, but we treat it as though it’s, it’s the truth. And I think learning to challenge what you’re telling yourself and there’s a real physical element to it too, like really stepping in and holding ourselves powerfully. Like how would, how do you, where do you need to connect to your own inner, a brave heart, hold yourself that way and embrace the discomfort that is a prerequisite for overcoming humidity and for being brave and for taking those actions.
MW (22:38):
And the more we embrace discomfort as part and parcel of what it takes to do, what it is we really need to do and want to do, like in our heart of hearts, then actually the better, more comfortable we, we become with doing uncomfortable things. And I think it was Tony Robbins that said years ago, you know, you know, our success is proportionate to how willing we are to be uncomfortable. And I, and I kind of absolutely couldn’t agree more with that. It is uncomfortable work, but I think being successful, however, you define success, that’s never gonna happen if you stay comfortable and, and humidity just drives us to stay in our comfort zone, but of course, comfort doesn’t stay comfortable forever. And our comfort zone shrinks. And over time we become more timid and less confident, you know, more scared, more doubtful, less brave and, and courageous.
MW (23:36):
So it really the co over the course of our lives, I think we have to continually be challenging ourselves. And so to anyone who’s listening, I know that you’ve got an, an incredible audience of people doing great things and who want to do more great things, but perhaps sometimes get in their own way because they’re afraid of falling short. And I would say, give yourself permission to fall short. And, and when that little voice of timid pipes up. So thank you very much. I know you’re trying to keep me safe now, shut up and, and step forward anyway.
RV (24:11):
Yeah. I mean, that, that is powerful. And so tactical, I think, and so, so useful where, where Dr. Margie, should people go to connect with you? I know obviously you’ve written for a long time for Forbes. So some of them are to be already reading your Forbes column, but like where where do you want people to go? If they wanna like, learn more about what Dr. Margie is doing?
MW (24:33):
Yeah. Look, I am on, I’m pretty much all social media to Insta Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please connect with me. I’d love you to connect with me there, but you can also go to my website, Margie war.com. And if you type in slash live bravely, you can sign up for my free course on how you can be braver. It’s a four part video course that I created that is share some of my, some stories and some, and some really practical ways that you can step it up in your own life to overcome whatever fear is and is getting in your way.
RV (25:11):
I love it. Well, we’ll put links to that over in the show notes and Dr. Margie, thank you for this. I mean, this, I think just strikes right at the core of that, like that courage and, and winning that battle with that little voice. I mean, if you can, if you can beat that little voice every day than you, like pretty much can do just about anything.
MW (25:31):
Amen. Very true. Well, thank you so much for having me RO great to talk to you. All
RV (25:36):
Right. We wish you the best. We’ll follow your journey. Everyone. Go check out Dr. Margie and keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye
Ep 231: Playing the Long Game with Dorie Clark | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon,
RV (00:54):
And we’re back on the influential personal brand podcast recap edition solo episode with Rory Vaden. AJ is not with us here today, but I am dissecting and digesting. And then distributing knowledge back to you on the Dorie Clark interview that we did, Dorie has been a longtime friend, and she’s just really well loved and really well-respected in the space, in our space and in our industry. And so it’s great to be able to see her and learn about her new book and playing the long game and all, all these kinds of things. So I want to share with you there, there, there were, there were two major takeaways. I have, I have three, but I’m going to focus in mostly on these, these two major takeaways that really, really stuck with me. And this first one is totally unique.
RV (01:50):
I’ve never ever had this thought before. I’ve never heard anyone talk about this and the way that Dory said it, it was kinda like she sort of quickly and lightly referenced it. But as I was thinking back, it really, really hit me hard. And so we were having this conversation of how long does it take to be successful, right? And like, just about anything and, you know, sharing our kind of our perspective back and forth on all these different ways in places that we’ve seen people be, be successful and things that we’ve tried to accomplish, et cetera. And basically what we both concluded was that it’s like, it takes two to three years before you really start seeing the results of your work. And then at five years is when it really starts to get, you know, exciting. And I think there’s so many examples of that, you know, in, in my own life, as I, as I look back you know, and doing the world championship of public speaking, like that took, that took, that was like two years of my life.
RV (02:59):
And then after that, it was like another couple of years before speaking really started to take off. I think of the, the, the first company that we started and it was like, you know, we started off pretty strong, then we kind of like leveled off, but then it was about five, about five years into it. We started to really like, turn the corner and hit this, this exponential growth. And this is, this is, this is true in Dory. Was Dory was sharing that about her. I mean, brand builders group is now three years into the business and it’s where it’s starting to get exciting. Like, it’s basically just been a grind in a startup and digging ditches, as we say, and laying the trenches and the foundations of a building a company. And it’s like, oh, it’s starting to get exciting. And my guess is that within two or three years, it’s going to be like, holy moly, this is amazing.
RV (03:50):
And then, and then at some point after that, it just turns to almost like it feel, it starts to feel unfair because you’re just like, I don’t even feel like I’m, I’m having to work as hard for this wonderful blessing. And that’s because for five years you got your teeth kicked in and you got beat up and it was just like stress and heartache and problems and breakdowns and like one gut punch after the next. And there’s also still problems. I mean, it is, it is true more money, more, more problems. But I’d rather have those problems than, than, than the other ones. But so here’s, here’s the part that is unique. That really hit me, that I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve never had this thought. W here’s the words, I’ll tell you the words that she said. And she said this like very casually sort of nonchalantly.
RV (04:42):
And I don’t even know if she meant to emphasize it, but she said the words, significant competitive moat, MOA T moat, a significant competitive moat. And as I was thinking back after the interview, for some reason, those, those words were like hitting me, significant competitive moat, you know, and what is a moat, right? A moat is what they used to put around a castle. And they would put like alligators in there so that when the Drawbridge was up, it was like, good luck attacking the castle. You gotta like, get through all the alligators. A is a, is a barrier. It’s a, it’s an insulator for safety. It’s a protective device, right. Or a strategy or, or, or, you know, now I think that, that you have, well, here’s the part that stuck with me after, as I was thinking about that. And I was like, why is that?
RV (05:38):
Why did that hit me so strong, significant competitive moat? Well, here’s the power, all the things that you’re struggling with now, all of the obstacles that you’re facing all of the time it’s taking all of the blood and sweat and tears, all of the challenges, all of the heartbreaks, all of the heartaches, all of the struggles that you are going through now will one day become the moat that securely protects you from other people coming in. And I’ve never really thought about it like that, of going, oh my gosh, all of the heartbreak that I went through is now something that is out there, kind of like working in my defense, so to speak. Now we’re not, we’re not scarcity people, we’re abundance people. So we’re not worried about, like, we don’t worry about competitors ever. Like we, we, we don’t really freak out about competition.
RV (06:40):
We only think that there is collaboration, but even so it, it, it’s, it’s this idea that there is this barrier to entry. There is this price of admission. There is, there is this initial orientation or this obstacles. You have to overcome that to get to where you are, you know, like to where you’ve made it. And that’s those very same challenges that were annoying you and driving you crazy one day become the things that you’re thankful for as a, as a moat, as a barrier to competition. They, and it’s not just a barrier to competition. It’s sort of, it, it sort of symbolizes and codifies your place in the world as an expert or as an entrepreneur or as the leading business on blank, because you’ve made it through that. And not very many people do so that, that just really hit me hard.
RV (07:41):
It’s just like, wow, all the things that I am frustrated with now are one day going to be the things that are protecting me and protecting sort of like our place in the world or our business, or, you know, my place in the world. And you don’t really think about that as you’re, as you’re going through those challenges, but they do become a significant competitive moat. And I want that to be encouraging for you, because if you’re in, if you’re in those early stages right now, it’s hard, right. It’s discouraging. It’s painful. It it’s, it can be hopeless. I mean, it can be desperate where you’re like, I just don’t know if this is working. I’m so stressed and overwhelmed and broke and tired. And like, is this ever going to pay off? And the answer is yes. And then once it does, it keeps paying off because you’re now on the other side of this, this moat that almost nobody will get past because they’re going to, they’re going to stop and they’re going to quit at all the same places you’re thinking about quitting right now, right?
RV (08:49):
Like, think about that. Most people are going to quit at the same places. You’re thinking about quitting right now. So if you don’t quit, if you keep going, if you keep pursuing, if you keep chasing, you keep taking the stairs, you keep serving, you keep pouring out and adding value and working and building, you know, digging the ditches and building the infrastructure and doing all the things that we talk about. A brand builders group that like five years from now, you’re going to be standing like all alone. I mean, you’re going to be on this island with very few, you know, sort of like an elite few that have made it, and then that’s going to become part of your protection. That’s just really powerful. And you know, it’s really cool brand builders group because now that we’ve been around for three years, we’re seeing these stories.
RV (09:35):
One of my favorite stories recently to share is Ian cognac, who is one of our clients. And he started with us. And when Ian started when, when he first started, it was like, Hey, you should do a video every week. And this is one of the things that we teach in our curriculum, right? Is you need to publish one video every week. Well, Ian started doing that on LinkedIn is post a video a week, a video a week, and his first video, seven views, 14 views, 11 views, right? And at some point you go six months into it. He’s posting this. And it’s like 26 views. Not really feeling, feeling it, but we’re going just stay the course, just keep going. One video a week, one video a week, one video, a week, two years later, his average video view gets like seven to 8,000 views.
RV (10:23):
His com coaching roster is completely full. He’s got like more business than he knows what to do with this is now like his full-time gig. He’s living his dream. He’s changing lives because, and, and, and, and most people will never get there because they won’t cross cross that mode. You know, Anton, gun’s another person who started working with us a few years ago and it was, you know, low six figures, low six figures, three years later, he’s all in doing the stuff, you know, going through the grind, like all the things we’re asking him to do, and he’s doing it, he’s doing it. And three years later, it’s like several hundred thousand dollar business. Let’s just say, north of half a million. And well, north, because it’s like, oh, it’s, it’s starting to catch. And you create this. You insulate yourself against competition.
RV (11:11):
Lisa Woodruff is one of our clients. Who’s we started working with her several years ago. We met her and, you know, she was a couple million and now it’s like, it’s, it’s way more than that. She’s pushing the eight, this eight figure number, because they’re doing the things. And then it’s like, once you get to that, these new levels, very few people will get there because you have built a significant competitive moat. The things that the challenges you’re facing today that are driving you crazy are going to be the very same challenges that you’re grateful for one day, because they’re securing your safety and they’re securing your place in the market. That’s so, so powerful. And I’ve never, never thought about it that way. The second thing was around this, you know, I asked story this question. What’s how do you find your personal vision?
RV (12:04):
And, you know, we, we take the stairs, we talk a lot about vision. And we haven’t talked about vision boards and the power of vision. And I share some of the stories of some of the big visions I’ve had in my own life and how I wrote them out years in advance. And then they become true. And that has happened over and over again. I mean, it’s a very house that I’m sitting in and you know et cetera, but the there’s a lot of different ways to come at vision. And our, we have our conquering impossible goals course is we take people through all of this assessment and analysis of how to find their purpose and how to find what they want to be and what they want to do in life. And so, anyways, I just sort of randomly asked this question and I kind of thought, Dory might say something like what you hear all the time of, how do you find your personal vision?
RV (12:53):
But what she said really caught me off guard, and it’s really stuck with me. She said, oh, well, ask yourself, who are you jealous of? Who are you jealous of? And that was powerful. And a little bit like it caught me off guard because, you know, we think of jealousy. I mean, jealousy is a, you know, it’s a bad thing like jealousy, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. It tends to cause you to not be grateful for what you have, but there is also this, this little element that comes from not jealousy, but who do you admire? Right. I mean, I guess that’s, that’s probably the, the, the, the better way of saying it. It’s who do you admire? Who do you look at and go, gosh, I like what they have is so cool. I would love to do something like what they did.
RV (13:41):
Yeah, I think admire is a, is a, is a better word for this, but I think those are hints to your divine design. Like when you see something in the world that someone has, or someone created, or some group of people created and you go, that’s awesome. I would love to have something like that one day. I don’t think that’s an unhealthy feeling. I think if it, if it makes you go, oh, if only I had that, then I could be happy. That’s unhealthy if you said you know, oh, look at how easy they have it. I have it hard. That’s unhealthy if it’s, if you say gosh, they’re so lucky. And look at me like, I’m, I’m unlucky. That’s not healthy. Even if, even if you see something, you go, oh, I can’t be grateful for what I have, because it’s not this thing that I want.
RV (14:42):
That’s an unhealthy, but if you just simply go, you know, what they’ve done is amazing. I’d love to do something kinda like that. That’s totally healthy. That’s ambition, that’s drive that’s inspiration. And, and, and I would call that divine design. I think those little cues are hints. They are, they are clues as to the calling of your heart and the design of your life. And like what you’re created to do, because you there’s these things in the world that you see in, you’re drawn to them and you go, oh, that’s beautiful. I I’d love to do that or have that, or accomplish that, or support that, or create something like that. That’s a clue to your calling. And, and I think that’s, I think that’s super duper healthy. So Dory said, who are you jealous of? I’m a temperate back a little bit and say, who do you admire?
RV (15:33):
And allow yourself to sit in that admiration and allow it to be divine inspiration, and a clue for who you’re meant to become. And I think that’s a really, just a really fast, clear way of figuring out who you’re meant to be. And if you are on that journey, trying to figure out who you want to be, what do you want your personal brand to look like? You should request a call with our team and you should talk to us about that. We know something about it, where we’re really good at it. We have a lot of great history with clients and some of the things that we’ve done ourselves. And if you’re not yet ready for that, then I would just say, keep tuning in, keep coming back, listen and learn from these guests. We’re just sharing all this stuff for free from our friends, our networks, a lot of our clients that we bring on.
RV (16:20):
And you’re getting to learn from people who we learned from too. So I hope you’re enjoying the podcast. If you are, keep coming back, share it with someone. And if you’re ready to get serious about figuring out what is that future for you? What is that personal vision for your personal brand requests, a free call with our team and let’s talk and let’s get you going in that direction. But until then, we’re so glad you’re here. We love you. We believe in you keep coming back. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 230: Playing the Long Game with Dorie Clark
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, Dorie Clark is someone that I have known about for years. We’ve kind of been friends and acquaintances and hung out here and there. And I just think she’s delightful and wonderful and extremely intelligent. And so she has a new book that is coming out called the long game how to be a longterm thinker in a short term world. It was a wall street journal bestseller. It came out a few weeks ago. She had a fantastic launch. We’re in a little author mastermind group together. And so most recently we, we reconnected around that, but she also teaches at duke university. She’s a contributor, a long-time contributor to Harvard business review. She’s been featured in all of this major media and was also awarded one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by thinkers 50, which is an extremely prestigious award and group to be a part of. And anyways, she’s cool. And she’s here Dory. Good to see you,
DC (01:53):
Rory. It’s so terrific to get to spend time with you. Thank you.
RV (01:56):
Yeah. So your first book reinventing, you was kind of like more about personal branding specific. That’s like very much in our, you know, the world that we live in these days. Tell us about the long game and you know, how would you describe this in a, in a phrase and then you know, let’s just kind of, I want to dive in around there.
DC (02:21):
Well, the, the phrase that I would use to describe the long game is it is applying the lens of strategic thinking to your own life and your own career. And the way I actually see it tying in with my previous work and with personal brand in general, is that in many ways, the inspiration for the book came from the coaching clients that I worked with in the people, in my orbit. And we’d be having a session, they’d be updating me, they’d say, okay, I did this, I did this. And at a certain point in almost every session, there’d be this pause and then say, so what now, what next? And they’d be looking for the next thing. They, what they kind of wanted me to tell them was like, oh, go all in on tech talk. That’s the thing do that big or what, you know, whatever the thing might be.
DC (03:10):
And I often felt really like the bad guy when I was talking with him because so often my advice was the thing to do is like, keep doing the thing you’re already doing. And I realized that when it comes to professionals that are passionate about getting their ideas out there, getting their message heard on one hand, we know that there is not some sort of magic bullet that will do it for us. And on the other hand simultaneously, we still kind of want one. And so, yeah, why not? So I wanted to write a book to really hopefully be a bit of a framework for people about the hard part of patients, because for a long time, if you are doing the work, if you’re really pushing to get your ideas out there to get better known and to build your brand, it’s a process that usually takes awhile and it can feel at various points in the journey as you know, really demoralizing, it feels like, oh, is this working? Oh, why is it taking so long? But that is what we have to muscle through to get to the other side. And I really wanted to encourage people to be able to do that so that good people didn’t give up too soon.
RV (04:22):
How long, how long does it take? Right. So if you know, I think about Malcolm, Malcolm Gladwell, you know, popularizing the 10,000 hour rule, right. Or a lot of times what we, we almost describe brand builders group is going, like, we often position ourselves as telling people, Hey, we’re not the people that are gonna like say, you know, you’re going to make six figures in the next 30 days. We’re the people saying we’re going to take something that would normally take 20 years and get you there. And six, like, but how long? And I know that’s a, that’s a kind of a broad question because the answer is it probably, it depends, but how would you answer that question? Like how long do I have to work at doing the right things? Even though I’m not seeing immediate results right away. And I’m like slogging away going okay. If I, if I do things the right way and I add value to the world and I keep trucking along here, like, okay, what when, like when do we actually start to turn the corner and see the, see some of the like big traction?
DC (05:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love the question. Worry. Cause you’re exactly right. Like everybody knows that it’s not overnight. We’re like, yeah, yeah, we get it. Okay. Not overnight, but nobody tells you what not overnight means. Like, is it like two nights?
RV (05:43):
I’m good for two weeks. So yeah. I, I don’t, I’m not overnight success. No problem. But two weeks later I’ve been doing this for two weeks Dory, like, and I don’t have a million downloads. Like why don’t I have a million downloads? It’s been 14 days.
DC (05:57):
That’s right. Well, I do, I do have an answer because on one hand, of course, you know, as you say, the caveat is yes. You know, conditions may vary for people, but also people want to know. And one of the things that I have had the benefit of over time is not only going through this process in my own journey, but now working with tons of people, I have this online course in community that I run it’s 600 plus people have been through. So there’s a real sense of sort of a cross section with longitudinal perspective. So I’ve gotten to see a lot of times what it looks like and where people get hung up up and how long things take. And so I’m curious to hear your answer, but my answer when people ask me this question is that typically, if you are, if you were putting in a you know, a strong effort, I say that it usually takes between two and three years to show almost any results. Like let’s be clear. And I then say, it will take about five years to show demonstrable results. Now the good news is that by the time you get to around five years, you have actually put in enough work, you’ve created a significant competitive moat between you and other people. That is a real headstart that differentiates you from the competition. But you know, most people are not willing to do it because you know, they’re at 18 months or whatever, and they’re like, this sucks and we gotta keep pushing. So how do you answer that?
RV (07:31):
Well, I mean the, the way that I would answer is, is more of a, more of the concept of it takes as long as it takes. Like, if you’re doing something that you really care about, if it’s really about impact, you just got to commit to say, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. And sooner or later it’s going to work. Like I think about you and I also speak a lot. And I think that was a very first time we met was maybe at social media marketing world at Jay Baer is one of my best friends. I know you guys, I’m pretty sure he’s who introduced us. And
DC (08:04):
It was NSA actually
RV (08:06):
Through Jess. It was the NSA. Anyways. So as the speaker world, I tell this story sometimes, cause I, I remember going to NSA and I was 20 something years old. And the first time I was at NSA they, they have this hall of fame award, right. That they give out to people and it was amazing. And, and, and there was a speaker that, that I knew and had heard before that he was honored by being in getting inducted. And I think a lot of people would go, oh, well, that’s amazing. Like it’s a far off goal. The thought I had in my head literally at like 22 was like, oh yeah, I’m going to be inducted into the hall of fame someday. But I didn’t, I didn’t know when, and I didn’t be like, I’m going to do it in two years or five years or, or, or 10 years.
RV (08:54):
But I literally thought I’m 20 years old. I’m going to do this the rest of my life. So even if I suck, like it’s 50 years from now, even if I suck, like after 50 years, I’m probably going to get this award at some point. So I love it. It’s like, if you’re really doing the thing you love, if you’re really doing the thing you got, you’re committing your life to, and you go, I’m going to play the long game because this is the thing that matters to me. It’s not vanity or money. It’s like, it’s like your calling then. You know, it ended up, it ended up taking me like 17, I guess, 16 years. So I was, I got inducted in 2018. So it took a minute, but it did happen. But I, I like your five-year answer. I mean, in, in terms of a practical answer, I, I like your five-year answer because like, you’re not going to change your life completely. Typically in a year or two. Now we had a, we’ve had a client, we helped to get a viral Ted talk. She got 3 million views in a year and it has made a pretty substantial change, but it’s still at this point, you know, now we’re like two or three years in, it’s still mostly a trajectory change the fruits of that really. Aren’t, she’s going to start reaping here in the next 2, 3, 2, 3, 5 years. I think your five-year answer is a good one.
DC (10:21):
Yeah. Thank you. And I, and I appreciate what you said, Rory, because one of the ways, I mean, you know, always the question right, is okay. If you’re going to slog through something for two or three or five years, how can you keep yourself motivated when it feels so long? And when you’re not typically in the early stages getting much positive reinforcement,
RV (10:40):
How do you keep yourself motivated Dory for five years when you’re slogging through this crap Fest of just getting punched in the face. And it’s like, I’m putting 70 hours in. I got three views on my YouTube channel. I got eight downloads of my podcast. I’m speaking for free. Or, you know, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m working 80 hours a week. And I still feel like I’m doing everything. How do you keep yourself motivated Dorie Clark?
DC (11:04):
Well, I think one, one of the ways that we can answer this is to, to choose activities that we’re doing, that we can nonetheless derive a short-term payoff from even as we’re pursuing the longer goal. It’s, you know, we can think of it as winning, even if we lose meaning, you know, hopefully the long-term will pay off that’s, that’s the goal. That’s the thing we’re all after, but let’s pretend it doesn’t for some reason, how can we make sure that the time we spend is not time that we are wasting? And so just as one example, let’s say that somebody has decided, all right, I’m going to start a podcast. And the goal is that they want to establish themselves as a recognized expert in their field. And they, you know, maybe they want to have something that one day becomes a huge podcast and they could get advertising revenue and things like that.
DC (11:56):
That’s, longer-term, that’s harder, but in the short term, the value of a podcast or a blog or video series or whatever you choose choose your methodology is that you could be using that in the here and now to connect with other prominent people in your fields. You could be connecting with potential clients. You are using it as a lever for relationship building, which is something that presumably you want to be doing anyway. And so at the end of those five years, even if you don’t have, you know, iTunes, top 10 podcast or something, you have a heck of a lot better network. You have a lot more business prospects, more people know who you are and know what your name is. And that is something that is going to be valuable no matter what the long-term outcome is.
RV (12:44):
Yeah, I will. I mean, I love that you and I were catching up on our personal story of when we exited our last company and starting over. And it was like, all we had was our reputation. We didn’t have the followers, we didn’t have the client list. We didn’t have our email, we had nothing. But what we had was a bunch of people that we’d met, that we had helped here and there along the way with stuff. And that made a really, really big difference. And I love that winning, even if you lose idea, the other thing about this I want to see your thoughts about this, because I think it’s funny how let’s use YouTube. So my car we’ve been slogging through YouTube. That’s a good real life example. Like I think our new YouTube channel, I think we’ve been doing a video every week and we’re on like, I don’t know all coming up.
RV (13:32):
I think maybe on two years and our video, we’re still getting maybe like a couple hundred video views. And it’s like, we’ve been doing this for two years. We got a couple of hundred views. And I think what people often forget is you go, you look at, you know, XYZ, some other person, right. You know, grab whoever Tony Robbins and you go, Tony posted a video and they get million views. I got 200 views. And yet we forget that if you were standing in front of a room of 200 people that were live for most of us, that would get our heart rate pumping like even 50, you know, or a hundred. But we go, ah, you know, my, you know, my Instagram video got a hundred views and it’s like, if there were those a hundred people were standing in front of you, you’d be jacked. And I think we lose that perspective digitally. Sometimes
DC (14:25):
I think that’s a really right on observation. I mean, sometimes people who are not authors will ask me, are you doing a book tour? And the, you know, the first thing of course is like, well, hashtag COVID no, not really. I mean, it was hard enough to even get a place to have a launch party in New York because like a lot of the bookstores have stopped doing events. So are, you know, hopefully will get better and that we’ll get back to normal. But, but even regardless of that you know, publishers are very, very hesitant to pay people, you know, pay for people to do that now. And you can understand why, because if you were to travel all around, you know, the planes and the hotels and the trains, and you’re going to different cities, if you did a bookstore event and it had 50 people in it, or 75 people that would be a path to bookstore, it would be like, wow, this is so huge. This is so amazing. Meanwhile, if you stay at home, even like literally the worst podcast has 50 people that listened to it. And so thinking about just how we deploy and leverage our time digitally, it’s a, it’s a really big difference.
RV (15:39):
Yeah. I love that. I love that. So what are all the ways that we play the long game? Okay. So I know that that’s the premise, which I love, we’re totally aligned on that. I mean, I think you go, okay, choose activities that you can win. Even if you lose what are like the other places or prac practical kind of like expressions of which the long game plays out. I mean, we’ve kind of used the content marketing example here, right? Like YouTube being, or doing podcasts or something, where else in our business and our brand is this really, this concept matter.
DC (16:20):
Well, one area that I talk about in the long game, Rory is actually applying a concept that many of your listeners may be familiar with in a slightly different context to our own lives. And that is the concept of 20% time, which Google has really popularized. And the idea for people who are not familiar with it is that Google employees are encouraged to spend up to 20% of their time working on, you could call them speculative activities or experimental activities that are outside their typical job description. And, you know, a worthy caveat here is that even though technically, you know, oh yeah, you can do that. It’s actually a very small percentage of Google employees who do do that because the, there there’s always such a lure of the short term, you know, people are like, oh, how could I possibly do that? I have so many emails to answer.
DC (17:10):
You know, it’s always easier to just do the thing at hand to tend to the urgent, but there is real power. I think for all of us, whether you work inside a company, whether you are self-employed, whatever your circumstance is, number one, we have to realize nobody is going to hand us experimental time. We have to, we have to carve that out and protect it for ourselves. And number two, I think it is one of the most valuable things that we can do because, and, you know, if 20% sounds outrageous, fine, make it 5%, make it 10%, whatever you can do. But we all know, you know, if anybody, with the most rudimentary knowledge of investing principles has heard, it’s a good idea to diversify your portfolio. Don’t put all your bets on one, on one, you know, square, don’t put all your money in one stock.
DC (17:58):
Well, similarly we tend in our professional lives to do exactly that. And it’s great while it’s great. And then if the market changes, if there’s disruption, if there’s some kind of a, an alteration in circumstances, it can actually be devastating. And so making sure that we are actively carving out space to learn new things, meet new people, develop new skills and new interests is actually the kind of hedge in our life portfolio that we need to protect our downside and also give us an opportunity for potential upside in ways that we can’t quite imagine yet.
RV (18:36):
Hmm. Yeah. That’s, it’s interesting. There is that I think it’s in the year, I want to say the year 1969, Charles Hummel wrote that essay, the tyranny of the urgent and just constantly pulled to whatever is short term and right in front of our face, which doesn’t require as much of the, the creative thinking or even just like the, the freedom to kind of daydream a little bit. I wanted to ask you like, to the point of strategic planning, you described this to me when we were chatting as the long game is a little bit of like the strategic, the kind of strategic planning that companies would do, applying that to your own personal life. Can you talk about that a little more? And what, what does that mean? And actually like how, like what actions or what behaviors would we engage upon to do that kind of strategic planning for our own life?
DC (19:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it’s interesting because a lot of the folks that I work with, I mean, they’re, they’re smart, you know, educated professionals and it’s, it’s almost second nature in their day jobs to be doing strategic planning for their business, right? Oh, that’s what we do. We come up with the 10 year plan, the 20 year plan, the one year plan, the five-year plan and then you execute against it. We are very familiar with that, but what I have often seen is that the things that are intuitive to us in our business, we often fail to make the parallel and turn the mirror on ourselves to realize, oh, wait, I should probably be doing something similar for myself. And so at a really basic level, it’s, it’s asking ourselves questions like are the daily actions that I am taking lining up to put me in the direction of where I would actually like my life to go.
DC (20:37):
That’s one important question. Another one that I find useful is asking ourselves as often as we can, what are the things that I can do today that would make tomorrow easier or better and tomorrow, you know, could be literally tomorrow. I mean let’s, but, but it also can be this sort of endless tomorrow. I mean, if we take, if we take a sort of a clear example, like physical health, of course, if you’re 40, you, the 80 year old you is going to be grateful that you worked out and that you took care of yourself, that, you know, there, there’s no doubt that that is going to be a helpful thing for the longterm in the moment we know you’re busy in the moment, it’s hard. But if we literally bring it back, okay. You know, so yes, that’s a thing I can do that I’ll be grateful for in the long tomorrow, but in the short tomorrow, maybe it’s something as simple as laying out your gym clothes. So it’s the first thing you see on your dresser in the morning, so that you’re predisposed to go to the gym instead of mucking around in the morning and reading the paper and wasting time. And then suddenly you, you ran out of time and it, and you have to go to your work calls. So it’s, it’s just thinking through that alignment between today and where you want to go.
RV (21:55):
Yeah. I like that a lot. And I think one of the places that people seem to struggle is figuring out the long-term it’s like seeing the picture, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve become convicted that the single like greatest difference probably between people who end up with an amazing life and those who end up with just like whatever is, they think long-term and most people don’t, they’re not good at thinking long-term, they’re actually, they’re not that great at figuring out, like, what do I want to be? Who do I, what do I want to do? Who do I want to be? Why do I want to have because I think it’s like, if you nail that, if you get, if you’re somehow clear on that, then it becomes more naturally obvious that it’s like, well, I’m doing a bunch of stuff. That’s taken me this other, this wrong direction and it’s not lined up.
RV (22:58):
Do you have any tips for people that are going like, gosh, I just, yeah. I don’t know. Like I think about you know, any small business owner and even any big business, a lot of big businesses just run off doing a hundred things that they’ve always been doing and nobody’s actually going, like, what do we want to be in in 10 years? So think applying that kind of strategic thinking to our personal life, do you have any hints or tips or ideas for like determining what your long game should be or clarifying what your vision or purpose is?
DC (23:30):
Yeah. I have a couple of thoughts, Rory. I mean the first one is I always like to ask my clients, who are you jealous of? And I like this question, because so often we think of jealousy as this terrible thing. Like, no, I’m not jealous of anyone jealous. He’s awful. I wouldn’t do that. But the truth is sometimes, you know, we read about people, we hear about people, they could be folks in your life. They could be people that, you know, you are just, well-known in your field and there’s a piece of you that it’s like, oh man, I wish I could do that. Or, oh, how do you get that? And that is actually, you know, you know, of course we don’t want to be riven by jealousy, but it’s actually, I think in many ways, a trail of breadcrumbs, because there’s something in there that you admire, there’s something in there that resonates with you.
DC (24:21):
And if we are thoughtful about asking the questions and saying, well, well, what is it that appeals is it that you want to live in the same place that he lives? Is it that you like the manner in which she’s working and you’d like to have a schedule like that? Is it that you would like to also write for a particular publication? Like, what is it that is sort of sticking with you where it’s like, oh yeah, that you can actually begin to explore that and create a sort of wishlist and reverse engineer it for yourself. So that’s, that’s one way I think we can begin to get at it. And you know, the other way, the other thing that I’ll just mention is I think we’re a lot of people get hung up sometimes is they feel like they have to choose quote unquote, the right goals.
DC (25:06):
They’re like, what if I chose the wrong goal? And I just like, I’m S I’m a fan of like lowering the bar. I’m like, okay, you chose the wrong goal. Like who cares? It’s okay. Change it. Like, that’s really okay. You know, the, the point is we monitor things enough. I mean, you don’t want to be working 20 years toward the wrong goal. And you know, suddenly you’re like, oh, I never bargained for this. But if you choose something that is a goal, you work toward it and you reach a certain point where you say, gosh, you know, this doesn’t seem right anymore. I didn’t realize it would be like this, or, oh, wow. There’s been a huge market change. And this is no longer a good idea. That’s the moment where you can pivot. And it is okay. The work is not wasted. You have been working towards something that is a relative of where you want to go. The question is now we can fine tune it a little bit. So I think if we hold the goals lightly, it, hopefully it takes the pressure off a little bit.
RV (26:00):
Yeah. I love that. The jealousy thing is, is interesting, right? Because it’s it is such as seen as such a negative, but then you go there, something in that that speaks to you, it calls, it calls to you almost in the way that like if you were going to build a house, you would drive down the street and you go, Ooh, I don’t like that house. Ooh. But I love that house. If I were going to build the house, I’d want my house to look like that. Like, it kind of just speaks to your tastes until your desires and probably to like the, the, the divine design of what your life is supposed to really be. That’s really, really cool. And then, yeah, we can actually direction. Let go, just because you set the goal doesn’t mean it has to be your goal for 50 years.
RV (26:48):
You could, you could change it. That’s that is really, really good. Well don’t worry. This has been a delight. I just, I love your insights. And I’ve always just enjoyed just kind of being in your presence. And obviously the book is called the long game. If you want to pick up a copy of it, it’ll be around for a long time. You can go get that anywhere. The subtitle is how to be a longterm thinker in a short term world. Where else Dory, do you want people to go if they want to like connect up with you and what you got going on.
DC (27:21):
Thank you so much. It’s awesome to get to hang out with you here. And if folks are interested in these concepts about long-term thinking and how to apply it in your life, in addition to checking out the book, the long game, there’s a free long game, strategic thinking self-assessment that you can download it’s at Dorie clark.com/the long game. And of course if folks want to check out other stuff, including 700 free articles that I’ve written over the years for places like Harvard business review and fast company, you can go to Dorie clark.com.
RV (27:52):
Love it. Well, we will link up to all of that Dorie, thank you for your encouragement. And for the perspective of this, this has been super insightful and tactical as well. And we wish you all the best in your journey from here.
DC (28:06):
Thanks, Rory.
Ep 221: Using Quantum Physics to Build Your Brain and Your Brand with Mark Victor Hansen & Crystal Dwyer Hansen | Recap Episode
AJV (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the recap edition of the influential personal brand. I am AJ Vaden and the CEO and co-founder of brand builders group. And I am also riding solo today without my counterparts husband, business partner, all the things were evaded. But today I am here on myself to give you our recap on a recent interview that we did with Mark Victor Hansen and his life at crystal Dwyer Hanson on the basis of this new book that they had come out, not that long ago, but it’s called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. And I love stuff like this because we don’t do a ton of it on this podcast. I feel like we get very technical and very technical, and it’s all about how to, and it’s not that this is not a how to episode it most definitely is, but it’s a how to, in a very introspective way, which I think is unique and different.
AJV (01:11):
And I also just love the insights that they have on going from where you are to where you want to be and the power of questions and the power of asking. And I really, this was like one of the best interviews that I’ve listened to in a really long time on just that power of asking. Right. And I also really love this because it type takes it down to a Gary, how to tangible way on a kind of Ethereum topic. And so, okay with that, any more explaining, I’m going to get right down to what are the three big takeaways from this interview with mark Victor Hansen and his wife crystal? So the first thing was this thing that he said, because I am a mom of two toddlers and I am bombarded with questions all day long about all the things a million times.
AJV (01:59):
So I loved something that they said he said, is that as children, we are uncorrupted askers of questions. There is no fear and asking for what you want and doing it repeatedly with guard lists of what the answer is. And I love that phrase where uncorrupted askers, and at some point down the line, me and you and everyone else on this planet has been corrupted by fear and rejection and not getting the answer we want or not getting the outcome we want. And so we stopped asking, we stopped asking why we stopped asking how we start out. We stopped asking what, and I think that was a really aha moment for me because I recently had some other questions that have been asked of me. And I will kind of give you a little parallel of something that really clicked for me on this very particular topic is I have a life coach and he’s awesome.
AJV (02:58):
And his name is Pete and I have been working with him. Well, I dunno for the last several months and he asked me not too long ago, he said, how much of your life do you feel like is being lived by default? And how much of your life is a created lights that you’re, you are intentionally making. And that was a really big question, because I think naturally as an entrepreneur and as someone who runs a business, I’d be like, I am making it like it is a creative life. But if I was really honest with myself, I bet it’s like 80, 20, 80, 20 is default in what just comes my way. And at some point along the lines in last few years, I have really stopped asking myself, what do I want to be doing? What business do I want to be in? Why am I doing this?
AJV (03:52):
How can I do something differently? How do I have more time with my kids? How do I have more white space? And I’ve just said, there’s so much to do. I don’t have the time to do that. And I’ve become a corrected asker and I’ve stopped. And instead over the last few years, there’s been this default life that has been created unintentionally for me instead of a created life by me. So when I heard him say this, it was this combination of these two conversations that I’ve been having here lately. And I thought, wow, I can’t be the only person having these internal and external dialogues about why am I not asking for the things that I want, even if they’re of myself. So that would be my first big takeaway is just how do we become uncorrected askers? And we start asking ourselves those big questions that can be life-changing and life-giving but it’s like, we actually have to ask, what do we want and how do we get it, but also why do we want it? Why is it so important? And I think that that’s kind of the first thing, and I love what he said about this. You said that quantum physics and one simple sentence is just simply what you expect is what you’re going to get.
AJV (05:07):
And to me, that is a default lives or created life. And so how do we become uncorrupted askers of the things that we want? So that was my first big takeaway. I thought it was really, really good. My second one is kind of like a multi-piece component. And his, I love this. He says, you are not a human being. You are a human becoming. And I loved that. I love that reminder that just because we are where we are, does not mean that is where we’re going to be good, bad or indifferent, right. We will change, things will change businesses, economies, markets, friends, family, life, it will change, and it will all evolve. We are not human beings. We are human becomings. And because of that, we, the power and the ability to change those things for ourselves to get what we want, what we expect is what we get.
AJV (06:03):
So what are we expecting? Right? And then he said, there’s three simple things that you need to be asking of to get there. It is, ask yourself, then ask others and then ask God, not necessarily in that order, right. It’s probably ask God, ask yourself, ask others. But those are the three different places where we should be asking questions, right? It’s asking God for guidance. It’s asking ourselves what we want and then asking other people for help and a mix of all those things, right? Asking God for help asking ourselves for guidance. It’s like all the things that it’s ask yourself, ask God, ask others. And I love that too, because I think so often we forget that there is a higher being that cares and has intention of where our life goes. But he’s also one who wants us to come to him and ask of him.
AJV (06:58):
And I think that too was a great reminder for me is sometimes I’m too self-reliant and I’m too independent. And I forget to lean into the places that have already been designed for me to lean into. But I definitely don’t know best. And I definitely need the help of other people. Right. I, I, you know, I love this African proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others, right? It’s like, you’re not meant to do this by yourself. You’re not meant to do this life and business or personal brand by yourself. You need help. You need guidance, you need support. So ask yourself, ask God and ask others. And I, I loved that. He reminded us like right, there are billions of other people on the planet, but how many people have we actually asked?
AJV (07:52):
Right. And if the first a hundred thousand said, no, guess what, there are billions of other humans on this planet. And how often do we ask like 5, 10, 15 people? And we get told no, and we’re like, she’s never going to happen. There are more than 7 billion people on planet earth. And we’re asking five, 10 or 15 people. And we think it’s over. And we think they, we can’t be helped because of that. Like that was a mind blowing moment for me, just to remember, it’s like, oh yeah, I could ask like five or six people and get told no, and be like, it’s hopeless. Then to remember that there’s billions of other humans on this planet. And I haven’t even began to scratch, scratch the scratch of the scratch of the surface when I stopped at this nominal number with just the people in my local community.
AJV (08:43):
So it’s asked and knowing who to ask and how to ask and why you’re asking, okay, I can easily go on a tangent with all of this for a long time. All right. And then here’s my third one. And I thought this was really good. And he said, no, I want to also dig into, and I keep saying he, but it’s he? And she and mark Victor and his wife crystal. And it is both of them. It is a really great interview. And I really encourage it, encourage you to go listen to the full thing. But my last one here is just how this was really powerful. is they talked about the different roadblocks to asking, and why don’t we ask if like we know these things and we can buy into this idea, but it’s also like, we need to have some self realization of why don’t we ask these things.
AJV (09:23):
And they said there are seven roadblocks to ask, and I’m going to give you a very high level. But this is where you really need to go and get the book and actually read it for yourself. But here they are. So the first one is unworthiness. It’s like, well, we don’t think that we’re worthy of asking for the things that we really want and desire. The second thing is naivity, right? We don’t even know what we could be asking for. And I think that was really, really good. Three is doubt. Like, is this really possible, right? Could this really happen? Like, would anyone actually be able to help? Like with God really listening, there’s doubt. And then there’s excuses. I don’t have time for this. This isn’t what I was designed for. Right. I’ve already been told, no, can’t do it again.
AJV (10:03):
It’s like excuses. And I think that’s where a lot of us live. We live in this false reality of excuses that we’ve made up that are not real. We think they’re real because I live in our mind, but they are not real in the real world. And then five was fear, right? We are afraid to put it out there. We are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of being persistent. We are afraid of all the things that actually may be even what happened if these things did come true, but there is some fear associated with asking six, there’s a pattern paralysis, right? It’s a, this ongoing idea that it’s like paralysis analysis too. Right. But it’s, this whole idea is like, at some point we prepare repair, we prepare, we prepare, but then we never do. Right. And then that’s a repeat that happened so many times in our life is we get into this pattern and we don’t know how to get out of it.
AJV (10:57):
I, and I think about that as a, as a mom, I often pull most of my examples because I’m in the thick of it. It’s like, at some point it’s like, you get into this repetitive pattern and you’re like, oh my gosh, am I ever going to sleep again? It’s like, as those newborn, those first few months, it’s like, you kind of get in this pattern. You’re like, oh, I don’t even know what to do when there’s dozens, if not hundreds of things you can be doing, but we’re, we’re paralyzed in the moment of this pattern that we’re living in. Right. And that happens with asking for what we want in life too. And the last, but not least is disconnection. We are disconnected from ourselves. And what we really want are disconnected from our relationship with God and we’re disconnected from our relationship with others.
AJV (11:40):
So we don’t even know who to ask and we don’t even know if they would want to. And I think these going through these seven things and really talking about why aren’t we headed in the direction where we want to be, and how did we get in this default life versus a creative life is really powerful part of this interview of this episode. And I so highly recommend you go back, listen to the whole thing with Mark Victor and his wife crystal also go check out their book. And then also come back and listen to more episodes and more recaps on the influential personal brand with myself and Rory Vaden. And until next time I hope you guys have a great day.
Ep 220: Using Quantum Physics to Build Your Brain and Your Brand with Mark Victor Hansen & Crystal Dwyer Hansen
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, what a special treat for me today to get to introduce you to a married couple who I’m meeting as a couple, really for the first time, mark Victor Hansen, who I actually met years ago at the national speakers association, I was of course mentored by the late Zig Ziglar personally for several years. And mark was there. Jack Canfield was there. There was a lot of legends and mark is best known probably for being the co-author of the chicken soup for the soul series, which has sold get this over 500 million books worldwide. And today we’re joined by his wife, crystal Dwyer Hanson, who I’m just meeting for the first time. She is also an international speaker. She’s a consultant, obviously an author. She co-authored this book that we’re going to talk about, but crystal is amazing. She is a researcher in specifically in the, in the area of neuroscience, epigenetics, quantum physics, and she’s really just kind of an expert overall in the, in the general field of human potential. She knows a lot about nutrition and overall health. And so we’re going to call on some of her scientific knowledge to talk about the conversation of today, which is based on their new book. Their book is called, ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. We’ll put links to the book in the show notes, which you can check out and anyways, mark and crystal, so great to have you. Thanks for being here
MVH (02:28):
To be with you. Thanks for inviting us. This will be great. Fun.
RV (02:32):
Yeah. So first of all, so this book about asking I, it spoke to me personally. Okay. So when you guys sent the manuscript over and I start going through it, I found that I even at, you know, my stage in life or career I still struggle with asking and I think I have spent much of my life struggling with asking was raised by a single mom. We were very poor when I was young. We grew up with, with almost nothing. We were never homeless, but we were pretty close a couple of times. And I don’t know if it comes from that background or just the world at large, but I find that not only me, but a lot of people in the world struggle with asking. And so I just wanted to kind of like ask you why this book, why now, what was kind of the, what was kind of the mission on your heart for you know, letting this out into the world right now,
MVH (03:34):
What happens is we traveled to 80 countries, talk to some 7 million people loved every minute and met great, wonderful people. But the difference between somebody, the little successful and vastly successful, we discovered is one thing only the ability to ask to GEP what they want. So what we decided to do is write a book that would be chicken soup on steroids. If you don’t mind, my goal is to sell a billion books. I’ve asked myself, how do you do that? And so we said, well, we’ll do a book that, that transcends every chicken soup was magnificent. Wonderful, still doing great, but we’re learning that you got to add free levels of asking, ask yourself, ask others, ask God, and alluding to what you said is that we’ll talk about the seven roadblocks to asking that, that behooves, everyone to look at in the mirror. So they say, wait, that’s me, I’m stuck here, here, here, and here. And if I transcend that I can go fulfill my destiny because we believe last line is a God coded each and every one of us at birth with a destiny. That’s great. And most of us get so distracted in life that we don’t fulfill our destiny.
RV (04:38):
Hmm. Yeah. I, one of the lines I love this is later in, in the, well it’s, it’s, it’s after the prologue, but it says that basically like our destiny has already been created and our job is to, to, to unlock it and to find it. And I, I thought that was, I thought that was super good. I mean, so crystal coming from your vantage point, you know, I imagine this is, this is connected directly to some neuroscience here in terms of w why, and, and I’d love to talk about the seven roadblocks to asking because it, most of the people listening here are personal brands have some sites of some type they’re they’re a speaker asking to get booked for a fee. They’re an author asking for a book deal. They’re a coach asking for a client, or, you know, asking, you know, the spouse or God for more abundance in their life. But this is something we really struggle with. And you guys talk about these, these seven, seven roadblocks. So what’s some of the kind of like science part of this,
CDH (05:36):
Right? So I, it’s such a good question where there’s so much to it, but I think we all come to this earth feeling this inner calling, because we are all seated with this destiny. But then life starts to happen. Experiences happen, we get shut down and our brains are designed to store those experiences just in efficiency, right? So, so we haven’t had an experience, a negative experience. That’s attached to emotions, emotions create chemistry, the chemistry, the chemistry really cascades through our entire body. So our body remembers those things remembers when someone rejected us remembered when someone said, you’ll never do that, you know, and all these things happen suddenly we feel like we’re not good enough. So then we stop asking, we S we hold back. We don’t, you know, every time there’s an opportunity presented we, we want to do it, but then there’s some inner programming that’s stopping us.
CDH (06:30):
And it’s interesting because the S the science, we looked at the studies show that everyone going into this study had this belief that if they ask someone for help information advice, or just assistance, you know, in accomplishing something or getting something done that the perception was that they would be perceived to be stupid ignorant or just pushy and annoying. Right. And the truth of it is the studies revealed that none of that’s true, that if we’re just willing to put ourselves out there and ask another human being for something there’s an 80% more likely chance that they will help us if they can. And, but, but the other part of the study revealed it. They’re not people don’t just insert themselves into your life if you need help. So if you just sit there thinking, right, thinking that someone’s just going to come and somehow help you, it’s not going to happen.
CDH (07:23):
You have to be invited, right? People have to be invited into your life. And there are also studies that show when you really personalize that invitation, even when it came to they did an interesting study where people stood by and watched this woman get killed right. In, in New York, this was years ago. Right. And, and like, why didn’t anybody intervene? Cause no one asked specifically, but the further studies that they did, they, they, they determined that if you call out someone very specifically like, Hey you in the red jacket and black hair, I need your help. When we personalize our requests, people immediately feel bound to us. And so that’s, it’s so interesting in human psychology, you know, the psychology of asking, but like mark mentioned we identified the seven roadblocks to asking and mark and I found that every single person that we’ve met or talked to carries at least one, if not more of these roadblocks, sometimes all of these roadblocks at one time in our lives. Right. And I’ll just go through them really quickly. But those are unworthiness. Doubt, fear, pattern, paralysis, naivety disconnection. What do I miss? Excuses. Yes. Excuses. Yeah. And we can go deeper into each of these because each one is so important for us to understand. And it’s funny when we start going through them, everybody goes, oh, that’s me. I’ve I’ve stopped myself before.
RV (08:51):
Yeah. There were some, there were some almost gut wrenching stories that you share in the book around you know, somebody who gets divorced, I think maybe it was your uncle or somebody uncle and they got divorced and they never let go of it. And they carried, they, they, they held on to that, just despair and discouragement. And they had too much pride to sort of ask for help, ask for forgiveness. Or I think mark shares the story of dropping somebody off at the airport or something. And they just, they missed their flight because they, they never asked, they don’t know how to ask. And it’s like, it’s crazy. The lengths of like the amount of pain we will allow ourselves to endure because we are willing to embrace the level of humility. It re is required to ask for help. Like, is that which of the roadblocks is that? Or is that just like all of them?
MVH (09:50):
Well, the one on excuses is my brother had been way older than me. He was at some levels my role model, but he came down to visit us right after his wife had died. And he’d been in Alaska panning for gold and goofing off. And then, you know, I had to get up at four 30 to get him to a six o’clock flight, got him to our airport here in Phoenix, Arizona. We live in Scottsdale. I said, big brother, you need any help? Getting to the thinkers. I traveled a quarter million miles for 44 years, as you know, Rhonda Wolf speaking every day. And I thought everybody had airport protocol down and I didn’t realize it. And I get called late in the afternoon. I called his daughter, Jodie. And I said, Jodie, how’s dad doing your dad do. He said, didn’t, you know, he’s been in the airport 13 hours since you dropped him off.
MVH (10:32):
Excuse me, I get goosebumps telling you that. Could I go, what did I do wrong? Didn’t you know, the dad was dragged through the airport, by his wife, Priscilla, who is a love. We just adored both of them, but here’s a guy with a photographic memory. Here’s a guy, who’s got everything going, right. And so I wrote in this story, seven things you could have done. He could have asked me, I would have taken it to the gate. Right? I know protocols out. He could have asked to purple coat at our airport. We have purple coats to help you enter. There are 24 7 all kinds of stuff he could have done, but instead he sent messages, playing and ended up getting pneumonia and dying a little bit after it, it just, to me, it’s heart wrenching because I’ve got excuses. I can’t do it because I’m black. I’m too tall. I’m too short. I’m I got white supremacy problem. I got blah, blah, blah. You can have anything you want. There’s an excuse. But you got excuses in life where you got results and I’ve chosen and crystals chosen to have results. And we want everyone to go for positive, happy, healthy party. Well-Being results that manifest and source everyone and hurt Noah.
RV (11:34):
Huh. Yeah. You know, when you were talking crystal, this is so interesting. When you, you said this, I’ve never heard somebody referenced like a study about how if you ask people, you know, are like 80% more likely to help you. But if you don’t ask, they don’t just insert themselves. And that’s me, like, I never offer unsolicited advice to anybody. Like, it’s one of my rules. Like, but if somebody asks me, I’m like, oh yeah, I can, I can tell you how to become a New York times bestseller. I could tell you how to, you know, do you know, build a speaking career. I can tell you like all these things, but if, if no one asked me, I never just say, Hey, did you think about doing this? And now I’m realizing in my own life, how many times have I walked past someone who knows like the back of their hand, exactly what to do that could help me. And I never, I just, I missed it because I didn’t stop and ask them.
CDH (12:28):
Right. It’s such a good question. And it’s true. We don’t, as human beings, we will not impose ourselves upon someone else. Unless I ask now what you just said about walking past someone that really goes to the naivete roadblock. And that’s a really important one for people. And we don’t realize it. I tell the story in the book of our Filipino helper, who we, my girls were born 16 months apart. She’d come every day and help us and cook these amazing meals. And one day she shows up with this fruit and cut it up on a plate and hands it to me, this juicy orange fruit and I bit into it. Milda what is this? This is phenomenal. She goes, it’s mango. And I go mango, where did you get mango? I’m thinking she imported it from the Philippines. Right? She goes, I got it at the grocery store.
CDH (13:13):
And I’m like, these are the grocery store. How did I not know the best fruit in the world? I thought I was so worldly. You know, I traveled all over the world. I’ve been to Europe somehow. I missed the mangoes, but it made me think about what you’re just talking about. How many times do I pass by some person that could really be my greatest advocate and my next best friend or someone whom I could help with something. Right. And I don’t even wonder, I’m not even curious about that person or that opportunity or that business or that thing. It’s just because I’m naive. I don’t I’m so I’m naive. I grew up in, in Idaho where we have a lot of potatoes, but no mangoes. So part of our, that is one of the huge roadblocks is just our own naivete. We’re in our own little box, in our own little subjective experience.
CDH (13:59):
So it’s important to come out of that. And I have a tendency to be more curious. It’s part of that asking journey, wonder curiosity, inquiring about things, looking at people and experiences and opportunities with more questions in our minds, right? What is that? Who is that? I wonder what they do. I wonder what, what, you know, nuggets they might share. I wonder what wisdom they might have. Every person you encounter could be something or someone very important to your journey. But we get stuck in our lane and as entrepreneurs, we’re like, no, I’ve got my to-do list. I need to do this, this, this, we could be missing the greatest thing. So it’s important to look at that, that curiosity piece is something we talk about at the beginning of the book, because you know, as children, we come into this world as these kind of uncorrupted askers, right?
CDH (14:54):
We want to know everything we want to know. Cool. When, where, why, how right. And we’re also not afraid to ask for what we want. We’re not pretty much not afraid to ask for anything. And then depending on how we were parented, you know, stop asking so many questions, I’m tired of hearing from you, you know, or just what happened in our school years. You know, we got rejected by friends or the teachers said, stop basking, put your hand down. I haven’t called on you. You know, and your business experiences, your, your ideas and opinions. Aren’t valued. You start to shut down, you start to shut down and shut down and shut down. And that beautiful inborn, natural ability to ask it’s crushed out of us. And until we realize that that’s happened and look at our own roadblocks and, and start to open up our awareness and determined that we’re going to get rid of those roadblocks and rekindle that inside of ourselves, things won’t change for us.
CDH (15:47):
We have to use this ability to ask to move ourselves forward in life. That’s why we, you know, the subtitle of our book is the bridge from your dreams to your destiny, because we all come into this life like seated with these, these abilities, this innate ability and, and the things that we’re supposed to do. And then, you know, until we start, if, if we don’t keep asking and keep moving forward on that bridge, we’ll get shut down. We’ll get detoured. And so this journey into what mark and I call becoming a master asker is, is one of the most important journeys you’ll take in your overall success in life. And that’s not just for your career. It’s for your health and wellness for your relationships. The same thing applies relationships, get shut down because we’re not asking the right questions of ourselves. Remember it’s the three channels through which task, ask yourself, ask others and ask God. And I’d like to go into the, ask yourself part a little bit more to where I, because that’s really important.
RV (16:48):
Sure. Well, yeah, so I mean, I, I, I want to hear about that. And I also, as I’m looking at these, these seven roadblocks to asking again, and you talk about unworthiness, naivety, doubt, excuses, fear, pattern, paralysis, and disconnection. The, as I look at my own life, I think Mo the one that affects me the most is, is that I guess would be under fear. I fear imposing on other people. I mean, there’s a part of it. I certainly fear rejection. Right. But it’s more of like, even that it’s more like, I fear making someone uncomfortable for hat, for them having to reject me, like, even that is a burden to carry or that you know, why, why should they go out of their way to, to, you know, to have to help me. So in the spirit of free coaching live on the podcast, what would you tell Rory Vaden who struggles with that, that portion of, of, of this. And is there something I need to be asking myself to what you’re saying crystal about like, why I have that road,
CDH (17:55):
Right. So if you think about what you’re actually doing, Rora, you’re replaying your past. Okay. Cause you’re imagining that you’re, you’re imposing on somebody. You’re, you’re imagining that it’s going to bother them. So that’s probably coming from something that happened in your past where, you know, you felt like you bothered somebody or somebody shut you down or something, because honestly, if you think about it, you have no idea what they’re really going to feel, think, or, or say or believe about, about what you’re requesting. But it’s almost like at some level of your subconscious mind, you’ve already pictured the outcome. And so, you know, in the world of quantum physics, right, what we imagine is what we get truly. I mean, quantum physics summed up in one sentence is what you expect is what you’re going to get. If you want to know what you’re thinking right now, if you want to know what your thought programming is right now, look around at your life.
CDH (18:51):
That is the evidence, that’s the residue of what your actual thought programming is. And so you might go, Hey, I kind of liked my life, but I’d like to, these are the things I could improve on. So I have more work to do, or I might go, oh my gosh, really? Is this what I’m creating? Is this what’s going on inside of my mind? Because it is. And it goes on at the subconscious level. So you really have to start with that clean slate and start asking yourself, there are all kinds of questions in the book, you know the holding up the mirror questions, but it’s really starting. We say there are three critical phases of asking yourself to really start doing the self examination. And that is where am I now? So it’s really like looking at your life and saying, what do I have here? Do I like it? Is it working? What’s missing. Where am I at? Where am I?
CDH (19:40):
Where am I right now in my life? Like, where am I now in my life? Is it good? Is it, do I like it? Is that what I wanted to create? Start examining that all the little sub questions that comment or come under that, where am I right now in my life? And do I like it? Or do I want something different? Then the second phase, right, is where do I want to be in my greatest nth degree of my greatest career? My greatest ends degree of my greatest relationships, right? This is where you have to unleash your dreams, because if you’re just imagining little things, you know, mediocre things that that’s what you’re going to get. So you have to let yourself go into that place. Like where do I really want to be in my life right now? You know? And, and obviously things happen on this planet in a little bit of a delay, which is good because it gives you time to really sculpt your leg. But ask those questions from, from your imagination, imagine yourself on the stage of your mind and say, you know, who do I want to be in my greatest career? And then ask those questions backwards. Like, who am I talking to everyday? How are they responding? What services and products and I sharing and why are people, why do they like them? Why do they like what I’m sharing? What is it about?
RV (20:54):
So scary. Like, I don’t know why, but it’s like, it’s so scary to even sit there in silence with no one else around to even to even acknowledge that this is what I would want for my life. Like, and there’s a line that you say in the book and this is like another fear, I think. Cause you know, like for the most part I look around my life, me and AIG, we’ve built everything together and I go our lives pretty freaking awesome. And it is everything I imagined and it came a lot faster than I thought it would. But then it almost is like, I, you know, I think I’ve kind of stopped doing this to some extent. It’s kind of like I did this for a long time and part of it is going, it’s like, you know, what else do I need more?
RV (21:41):
But, but this is what you wrote. It said the perfection of our being causes us to want things or move at an even higher experience of life. We’re always evolving and wanting more want is a spirit jabbing you in the consciousness to move you to a better place, a higher level of expression. We always want more than what we’ve got. This isn’t necessarily just to have it, but to experience the growth within ourselves, we’re created to expand and grow. But it’s so scary, like to sit there and go, I actually want like to even dream and imagine this is terrifying.
MVH (22:20):
So, so let me talk to that. First of all, we’re saying by the end of the book, that same thing, you’re not a human being, you’re a human becoming. And what you said is that at some levels, I’m just reiterating back to you as I’ve heard it, that you sort of plateaued out because you dreamt it, you achieved it, achieved it faster than you thought you would. What we’re saying is you got it. Remember three things, ask yourself, ask others, ask God. And when you’re asking yourself, it’s a little, it’s a little sense of self that’s, stifling and Steichen is stopping it. So when you’ve got to go to this God who God sends us out and say, Hey, wait a second. If I Rory was doing my absolute slam dunk best, how am I going to positively affect this many people over this amount of time?
MVH (23:03):
And the question we have at the end of the book from, from a friend of ours, you know, Dr. Peter Diamandis, who’s wonderful. He’s got his own accolades, but he said, what are you going to do positively do affect 1 billion people during this decade. And that’s a giant question, but once you do it, like we’re going to sell, I will blow past a billion books, ask the bridge from your dreams, your destiny, cause Ron schedule. And we’re doing more than anyone ever thought we could do. And they said, nobody could do that. And I got a lot of critics, but the point we’re saying about this book, because now we’ve had it out a while, is it everyone that’s getting it? It has super successful fathers. Read it and go, they wake up the wife and say, you got to read this first story, fable and McKayla.
MVH (23:40):
And then they read it to their teenage kid or other teenage kid read it. So what we’ve discovered, don’t get one of these books, ask the bridge from your dreams. You’re definitely get two and go over it with your spouse or spouse equivalent, your mastermind partner, your business partner, your church, Harper, temple, Afro mosque partner, whoever it is. And you’re going to break through because everyone needs a mastermind partner for those who are watching one and one equals power of 11. And this is what Christ said, the kingdom of heaven is within and go out. Two of you can accomplish it. One of you can move a thousand. Two of you can move 10,000. Well, what if we really have that mind using God’s mind looking at our thing, then we’re invincible. In this story we have, as you know, is, is I studied in India as you know, and mother Theresa picks up this untouchable who had leprosy.
MVH (24:32):
And so Christ in his eyes went to the head of the Archbishop and said, I’m going to start. The ladies of charity said, how much you got, you said three sentences. You can’t do that. So no we’ve gotten 3 cents. I can do anything. And obviously she did monstrously, powerful, wonderful, impactful things. And what I’m saying to you and everyone listening, every author, we, all those of us that can think there’s only a few percentage. What we need to do is help the other 4 billion people that aren’t in the equation out of 8 billion people. And you have to monster challenge. What we’re saying. The only tool that works is ask God gave human beings. Only three things you gave is curiosity. And the ability to ask an imagination, to transcend our limitation and, and have new materialization. If that’s what we want.
RV (25:16):
I mean, it’s funny how, you know, the, there’s such a connection to the divine here, right? Because if you go, if you believe, if I just believe in myself, then it seems like, oh, this thing that I’m dreaming of is so impossible so far away. And like, my life is definitely evidence of that. Like from where I started as a kid to right now is like, it would, there’s no way, like it’s so far, but you go, but it’s nothing for God. Like it’s easy. Like it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a snap of a finger. And, and yet the doubt that we experience, I think is so connected to we’re placing that trust inside of ourself and evaluating our ask compared to what we’re capable of versus the ask compared to what God’s capable of and like the divine calling on our life, which is, you know, you write a lot about that and kind of filing your calling and, and live in your, your your purpose.
RV (26:13):
So, so one great thing is it’s funny because we haven’t really talked about the authors and speakers at all through this whole conversation. Mostly I’ve used this, this as a chance for free coaching, which I don’t apologize for. But they for people who have the dream of, you know, writing a book that sells a million copies, or, you know, in your case, you’re, you’re aiming at a billion copies now and you’ve sold 500 million. So like what are some of the things that you think that authors and speakers and entrepreneurs, you know, this is anyone professional service providers. You know, people who listen to our show executives, they’re, they’re usually like driven individuals. They’re, they’re what we call mission-driven messengers. That’s our audience. What are some of the things you think they need to, to really ask for or prepare themselves for, to, to access that calling inside of their life?
MVH (27:14):
So three things. One is I love him to get a copy of asks. So they start asking themselves bigger, better, stronger, healthier questions. Number two is I finished a book called you have a book and you’re not liking to read it in three is I’d like them to go to they can go to reception of mark, Victor Hansen. If they come to us, we want everyone to write a book. If they’ve written a book, we want to help them sell that book and market it. And we’ve got a multiplicity of ways. We’ve got everything from, you know, 12 videos online at, at Hansen institute.com to if they can’t write in 95% of people can’t write something. Anyone wants to read. We will go with them at mark Victor Hansen library, which is a brand new company we’ve just started. That is, that’s why we say good reception of work, the grants.com because we don’t need another website up for another couple of weeks, but we are going to help everybody catapult themselves to greatness because we’re finding markets. Most people can’t see their market for, you know, I was doing up to 250 talks a year. So I respectfully understand it. I see markets, nobody else sees, and there are more markets now than ever before. And we’ve got to go in crystal. I’d like to have her add to that.
CDH (28:21):
Well, I would just say for everybody, it all starts with a vision. So whatever you’re doing is going to have to start with the vision. And the more clear you get about your vision, the better it’s going to be, the more you’re going to manifest that vision. And the only way to get clear with your own vision is to spend time with yourself. It’s that ask yourself part, because that is the reflective journey, right? So sitting with yourself, asking, you know, where am I now? Where do I want to be? And what specific action steps do I need to take to get there? Because as you start asking yourself, and then you start to sculpt your own vision and your sculpt, your vision, you start with your vision, but then you sculpt your vision by asking the right questions. You know, what does it look like?
CDH (29:04):
What does it feel like? What am I doing? And all of a sudden you get a really clear, beautiful sculpted vision of what you want. And then when you start to get that, you’re going to start to get ideas. You’re going to start to think of a plan that you never thought of before, because here’s the other part of the science story. When you ask yourself a question, a different part of your brain lights up, and it’s the part of your brain that does critical thinking. Okay. So all of a sudden, just by asking yourself the right questions, you’re suddenly your brain is a better resource to you. Okay? So it goes to work for you. And the minute your brain goes to work on the visions, then start to connect at the quantum level. Okay? Because people don’t realize this, but your energy light field is, goes like three meters beyond you.
CDH (29:51):
And it, especially, it gets bigger when you’re envisioning something with a positive emotion. So the more you can envision and sculpture vision with a positive emotion feel what it feels like when you’re already that person be that person before you’re that person in the real world, right? Because your energy field gets bigger. And all of a sudden the quantum field starts to connect this isn’t whoop. This is absolute proven science. And it’s really actually where science is now meeting spirituality. It’s the sciences, meaning everything. Jesus talked about. The, you know, the kingdom of heaven is within all of the things, all of these scriptures you know, it’s basically you get to create the life you want. You’re created in the creator’s image. What does that mean? You are, you are created to create things. And we do that starting with our imagination and our emotional energy, the emotional energy is important.
CDH (30:46):
So it’s just very important to get quiet with yourself. Use this book as a guide. It will really, really help you. And more questions will come to you in sculpting your vision and really taking it forward. You will. I know I’m excited. I get excited for people because of the feedback that we get. I mean, it’s really life changing and the fable of McKayla that mark just mentioned. It’s really every woman in every man’s story because it’s, it’s a fictional story that, that I ended up writing mark and I were going to go back and forth on it. And I just started writing and it just flowed out of me cause I’m McKayla has these dreams. And I I’ve been blessed not to have these like dreams that have really guided me in my life. So I kind of, you know, made McKayla’s dreams a little bit similar to some of the dreams I’ve had, but anyhow, she gets guidance.
CDH (31:34):
She’s, McKayla’s basically lost everything. Her, her life every day is about moving heavy rocks from one place to another, literally. And then she has this dream she’s taken up by this being and he admonishes her to ask and never stop asking and little by little as she starts to wonder as she starts to look around her miserable life. Start to wonder, start to be curious, start to inquire, start to ask about people. Start to ask questions of people. Start to ask questions of herself. Her life changes 180 degrees by the end of her story is a completely different person, living a completely different life. And that is exactly what can happen to every single person. Listening. If you’re willing to take that inner journey and start asking,
RV (32:26):
I love it. Well, we will put a link to those URLs that you’ve mentioned. Mark. Obviously we’ll link up to the book again. We want to get in is called ask the bridge from your dreams to your destiny. You’ve been listening to mark Victor Hansen and Dwyer Hanson. One last question, just curious, who asked who on the first date between the two of you?
MVH (32:50):
Great long story. And I don’t know, we have time, but it was great. I was at Walker one-on-one. Her mother had sent her there. We were in a BIP room and I had a throng of people around me and somebody spilled red wine on her white pants. I rushed over to her, grabbed her hand and said, I know exactly where the club soda is. Let me take you there. And then I asked her, I said, look, it’s about nine 30 at night. It’s a little late. But if you don’t mind, if you’re hungry and she’s, I haven’t eaten. I said, me either, I got to take you off property because a thousand people that are here want to have two minutes of my time and we won’t get to talk. So I took her to the best restaurant in Hollywood and there was like 50 people lined up and I go, oh my gosh, I’m never going to get in with a hundred dollars bill.
MVH (33:29):
This isn’t going to work. So we walked up and because for those of you just listening and not getting to view, I’m sorry, but my wife has a radiant beauty. And she, her, she just emanates out wisdom and the guy looks at her and says, okay, who is she thinking? She’s a movie star and cause reteach questions. I always answer a question with a question. Everyone listening knows that. I say you don’t recognize her now is mine’s steroids. And I’m just goofing with a guy. The guy says, okay, I give up who is she? I said, now we’re Danish descent. Each of us. I said, my parents came from Denmark and said I give up who is she? I said, goofy goofing. I said, she’s a queen of Denmark. He said, no, she’s not negative. Oh my God. She is. And he asked the question, who are you?
MVH (34:13):
I said, well, who travels with the queen? Oh my God, you’re the king. Hold on one second. And then like that, we had a table. And not only that, we had the best table, 50 feet away. We get right in there and we have the top chef serving us. And we just felt indefatigably in love. I mean, we just resonated. I mean, I wrote it, but I had written 267 things I needed in my, be a woman. He attributes the characteristics or qualities of values or virtues. And I said, you never cross it out. I got the milk, eggs and butter. You write down victory in purple. And before we got married, I never pulled her what all those were, but she hit all of them. It’d be monogamous. We had to have exactly the same value spiritual. And she had to want to travel with me if we each had kids, which we did, our kids had to love each other. And, and you know, it’s going to be an eternal match. And it, we were two hearts and became one soul that it went from soulmate to twin flames. So it’s like I told you a second ago, it’s a long story, but it has been a more magnificent journey than I could ever have imagined.
RV (35:14):
Yeah. Well, that’s so great. And it is such a powerful book and a powerful concept. It’s really causes you to stop and reflect in a really deep way. And thank you for your time. We wish you the best. Everyone listening, go out and ask and you shall receive. Thank you so much, guys.
MVH (35:33):
Thanks for your loved every minute.
Ep 197: Fueling Your Own Creativity, Innovation, and Productivity with Juliet Funt | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
And we are back with the influential personal brand podcast, special recap edition of the interview I did with our good friend client and a, I would say mentor someone I’ve known for years Juliet Funt. And I have shared the stage speaking with Juliet on literally the biggest stages in the world. I mean she speaks at world-class events for world-class organizations and I’ve just, I’ve known her for years and we’ve gotten the opportunity to, to walk with her. And some of her creation around the, this book that she’s working on, which is now a a real life, a real life, a real life thing. And it is a, a joy to get a chance to talk to her about that. And obviously that’s what we were talking about. Fueling your own creativity, innovation, and productivity with this concept that she refers to as white space.
RV (01:06):
Obviously today I am rolling solo. I’m filling in for AJ who doesn’t make every episode as a, as a CEO of a fast-growing company, the mom of two toddlers she’s always got a bunch of stuff going on, so we try to catch her as much as we can. But today I’m rolling solo and I’m just gonna run you through my biggest takeaways in terms of how I’m applying, what Juliette was talking about in the interview. And then obviously in her new book a minute to think which I will tell you, I have read cover to cover. I am not able to read the book, all the books of every single podcast guests that we have on most of the people we bring on very familiar with, or I have read something of theirs in the past. This is a book that I have read cover to cover.
RV (01:51):
It is absolutely brilliant. Well-Written well edited, well-organized sharp, meaningful, clear, powerful, useful, and practical. And, you know, we touched on some of those concepts in the, in the interview. And so the, the first one to me is just that we all need more oxygen. Like we need need oxygen in our life. What she calls white space oxygen is to a fire. What are white spaces to our calendar? What oxygen is to a fire? It is just air it’s. It is margin. It, it is, it is openness and that is not a sign of weakness, or it is not a compromise in productivity. It is a necessary fuel. It is necessary to fuel productivity. And I love the way that she describes this, which is thoughtfulness interlaced throughout your day. What a great definition, thoughtfulness interlaced throughout your, and the benefit. And I thought this was super elegant and she’s super elegant in her writing.
RV (03:05):
Is that, you know, she said that the benefit here is that deceleration kicks in and you can listen to your own wisdom, how powerful and profound is that you can listen to your own wisdom. And so often so many ways. And so many days we’re going so fast, just sprinting from the next to the next, to the next to the next. It’s like trying to build a bigger fire by just piling more and more stuff on top of it. And there’s, there’s no oxygen, there’s no space, there’s no room to breathe. There is no fuel to grow the thing. And so I, I just love that. And I love the, the eloquence of being able to listen to your own wisdom. I think that is truly one of the most defining things that we do at brand builders group that is different from other, I guess I would say, you know, copywriters or people who help do, you know, identity for a brand is that we help you find your uniqueness.
RV (04:15):
We, for us, our belief is that the answers inside of you, it’s not, how are you different from everyone else? And it’s not. What do you do in relation to other people? It’s what do you do? What do you actually believe? What path have you walked down? And so much of this is being able to access your own intuition, your own insight, your own instincts, or as she describes it, your own wisdom. And in order to do that, you need white space, white spaces to your calendar, what oxygen is to a fire. And I just think that’s a brilliant, brilliant metaphor. Absolutely love it. The second takeaway for me, it was really just a question and it’s, it’s a very simple question and it’s super direct, but man, it hit, it hit me hard. And I think this question hits hard and I hope it hits hard for you.
RV (05:15):
And here’s what, here’s the question? Where are you doing high quantity, low value work? Where are you doing high quantity, low value work. And if you’re a leader if you’re not, you’re an entrepreneur with a team, or if you’re a personal brand, even managing a team of contractors, where do you have the people around you doing high quantity, low value work? Where are we running a bunch of manual processes, a bunch of, you know, manual things following a set of steps and a checklist that was created 10 years ago that, you know, we don’t even look at anymore isn’t even relevant anymore. And I just, I think this is super powerful. And I’ll tell you, one of the adjustments that I made immediately after listening to this interview was you know, our, our, our team runs the content diamond. Those of you that are, are members of brand builders group, like your members in our, our coaching community.
RV (06:13):
You know, we teach this content diamond process of repurposing content, which is brilliant and it’s amazing, and it totally works. But I, I was auditing, I went back and it was looking at some of the steps and I noticed that one of our steps is to embed a link to our YouTube video. Like we do a 60 every week, we do this five minute video and that’s, you know, we publish that on my YouTube channel or on our YouTube channel, if it’s the company stuff. And then we put it on my blog. So the bolt, my blog, Rory Vaden blog.com is the one place that you can go to access, you know, like everything that I’m doing. And so we make this really nice five minute YouTube video every week. Well, we also distill that down into a 62nd kind of teaser video.
RV (06:58):
And we embed that teaser video in LinkedIn, in LinkedIn pulse, which is LinkedIn’s blogging platform. And what I realized is we’re getting killed in the algorithm because there’s this external unique link to YouTube, which the, the, all the social media companies hate, they hate when you link to outside things. Cause that’s their whole goal is to keep you on their platform. And so we’ve got this, this one step in our process, which is embed a YouTube link, which is, you know, from years ago and our team is just doing that and we’re not watching and going, wow, we’re getting crushed in our reach, in our views. We’re not reaching anybody and going, we’re running this checklist, we’re spending however much time we’re doing it and going, we’re getting almost no value from it. So that was that was one of the things immediately that we’re, we changed in our business as a result of this interview.
RV (07:51):
And that was, that’s a question that I would ask for you, where are you doing high quantity, low value work? I think it is the, the, the, this is something that we talked about in our second book, procrastinate on purpose five permissions to multiply your time, which is that the human brain gets addicted to insignificance and trivial tasks. Why? Because when you cross an item off your to-do list or you hit delete on something in your inbox or you mark something as complete in your project management software, the human brain releases dopamine. Like if you monitor the human brain like under brain scan, there’s, there is a release of dopamine when we complete things. So we feel good. It tells us good job. Congratulations. You’re, you know, you you’re done. The problem is that the human brain releases basically the same level of dopamine, whether it’s a trivial task or a significant task, well, trivial tasks are take much less time and you can get a lot more trivial tasks done and get a lot more hits of dopamine.
RV (09:04):
So the neuroscience of your brain actually begins to work against you. You become addicted to that feeling the same way that you know, somebody is addicted to substances, like someone’s struggling with substance abuse is addicted. It’s this feeling, but in reality, what moves your business forward is not the volume of tasks that you complete, like ultra performers know that success is not about the volume of tasks you complete rather just about the significance of them while often the most significant tasks take a longer time. So you don’t check them off as quickly, which means you don’t get the hit of dopamine as frequently, which means that your brain left to its own devices. It was going to pull you back towards the insignificant, towards the trivial, towards the, the minutia, the mundane, in some cases, the meaningless. And we get addicted to this high quantity, but low value work and, and so many businesses.
RV (10:02):
And so many personal brands die on the hill of quantity. We’re just doing too many things and they’re not stopping and slowing down and decelerating and taking a moment a minute to think as the title of Juliet’s book is they’re not taking a minute to think about, does this really move the needle? Is this really valuable? Should we continue doing this? Is this high, high impact, very significant work. And if you don’t do that, you literally become addicted to the opposite. So that was just a powerful reminder for me and just a great reinforcement of some of the things that we should know, but, you know, we kind of lose sight of, and then the third, the third big takeaway least, you know, just for me listening to Juliette. And, and again, it’s, it’s, it’s really wonderful for me to be able to have this interview because I’ve read the manuscript cover to cover, like we’ve, we’ve walked with her a lot through just kind of helping her organize some of this.
RV (11:08):
And, and I mean, I, this book is going to be incredible. Y’all this is going to be a major book. Like, I think this is going to this that’s. The other thing is you know, random side note here is you should go, you know, to her site and you should watch what she’s doing. Cause this, I think this is going to be a really big business book. That’s going to have a lot of staying power. And it’s gonna make a big splash in the space. So you know, even if you don’t buy it for yourself, I think it’s like pay attention and watch what she does and how she does some of these things around the launch. But the third takeaway, which is another kind of sobering simple passion is just, are you scared of quiet?
RV (11:55):
Are you scared of quiet? Are you scared of sitting with your own thoughts? Are you scared of sitting still? Are you afraid of trusting that things can actually work out for you without your full control? That is a deeply profound concept and question that I just love how she ties it into like the practicality of every day, you know, productivity, but that is where the deep work happens. And you know, that’s why so many clients who work with us at brand builders group, you know, they come through our phase one course, one brand DNA experience. And they’re amazed at how deep the work is for most of our client. Well, for all of our clients, the very first encounter with us as is almost like it’s cathartic, it’s therapeutic. It’s, it’s, it’s almost, it’s almost spiritual because we’re going on this deep introspective journey of figuring out what is your uniqueness?
RV (13:06):
What is the problem that you can solve in the world that no one else can solve? What are you uniquely positioned to do? How, and who are you uniquely positioned to serve? And that’s what happens. First, later comes all the mechanics of here’s, how to launch a podcast and here’s how to write a book and here’s how to do a book launch. And here’s how to create a keynote. And, and, and here’s how to get booked for a keynote speech. And, you know, here’s how to build a company. Here’s how to do a sales call. And here’s how to build the funnel that dah, dah, dah, like we’ve got 14 events, 14 different two day experiences in our formal curriculum, as of right now. But the very first one finding your brand DNA is this, this deep work. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of exercises.
RV (13:47):
There’s, there’s not that much education. I would say in our very first phase one course, one of our, our whole journey, because a lot of it is just questions. We’re basically just peppering people with these questions that, you know, they go through this sort of like self exploration to find their uniqueness, to figure out who they serve, what problem do they solve? How do they solve it? And what’s the fastest path to cash solving that problem. But so many of us are scared of the quiet. We’re scared to be reflective. We’re we’re, we’re, we’re S we’re scared to be introspective. We’re scared to just listen to our own wisdom. And I think when, when you force yourself to, to have some quiet, you force yourself to face your fears.
RV (14:46):
It is in the quiet that we are unmistakably confronted with the things that challenge us, which is scary, but it also puts us in the ring with our fears. It puts us face to face with our fears and inevitably, and almost always, we beat those fears. We conquer those fears. We find the answers. We defeat the problems in that quiet. So while it is scary, it’s also tremendously empowering. And I believe, and I have experienced from my own life. And I believe this to be true for you is that if you take a moment to sit in the quiet, those fears and concerns may come up, but then you can see them. And if you can see your fear, then you can face your fear. And if you face your fear, you can defeat your fear. If you’re willing to sit in the quiet and inside of that silent conversation of prayer and meditation, or just being with your own thoughts, you are allowed to experience and explore the miracles of everyday life to write your own escape from the mental prisons of limiting beliefs of our own construction. So take a little time to have a little white space, white spaces to your calendar, but oxygen is to a fire allow for some quiet allow for a minute to think and know that your highest value work will come from your highest value answers, which you will most likely find in your quietest times. We’ll catch you next time.
Ep 196: Fueling Your Own Creativity, Innovation, and Productivity with Juliet Funt
RV (00:07):
You friends that I have that are scary, smart, super intelligent Juliet Funt is one of those friends I’ve known her for years, basically met her as a kid running around at the national speakers association when I was like in my early twenties. And she is one of the best speakers in the world. And I’ve shared some of the biggest, some of the biggest stages that I’ve ever been on. She has been there too, and we’ve kind of hung out, you know, my second book hung out a little bit in some of her space. She has a concept called white space, which is really about helping people just kind of reclaim their, their strategic pauses and thinking time and giving, giving them the time to sort of have more, a bit of margin and a, a bit of breadth in their daily life, so that we can be more creative and more productive. And so we’ve hung out a little bit in some of those circles and she’s just kind of an expert on, you know, managing all this busy-ness and overwhelm. And she got a great book deal. I’ll leave it at that. She got a very wonderful book deal with a major publisher, which we maybe we’ll talk a little bit about some, because she’s fresh done with turning in the manuscript for a real massive project. And anyways, Juliet, it’s great to have you welcome back
JF (01:29):
To I’m so thrilled to be here.
RV (01:31):
Yeah. So the new book is called a minute to think it is, and we all need to us talk to us about what is white space submitted to think what, what is all of this? And, and why does it matter?
JF (01:45):
The, there is this need for oxygen in the system of our days, and we needed it before the pandemic, but boy, howdy. I can’t even imagine a time in history that we needed it more. And that, that oxygen is really the foundational metaphor. It’s kind of, if you imagine you’re building a fire and you took paper and pine needles and logs, and you stack them all up and you tried to light it, nothing would happen. But if you added one critical ingredient of space, everything would beautifully ignite. And we are the same in our work is the same. And our creativity is the same. And yet we don’t have that oxygen. There’s no oxygen to feed the fire.
RV (02:21):
Mm. That is such a beautiful, distinct, sharp, accurate metaphor. There’s just, there’s no space. I mean, in the concept white space, of course, you’re referring to like calendar eyes, like you’re talking about counter space, everything is crammed together. And, and it feels like, especially with COVID like you used to like walk down the hall to a meeting and at least have 10 seconds to like walk down the hall to the next meeting. And now it’s like one zoom is over and the next zoom is starting. There’s like, literally not a breath right before we’re just running to the next thing.
JF (02:57):
The tactic we’ve discussed is if you can’t get a bio break, you just wait for a really chatty person and then you can mute P and returned before they, before you, you have to double check the mute, but that’s sometimes the only respite to get to get a second. And it’s so inhumane to begin with, but it’s also so unproductive. It’s so unproductive to take people that you’ve worked to find and hire and head hunt in these genius pieces of talent, and then put them in a deoxygenated environment where they’re just going to shrivel. It’s a, it’s a lot.
RV (03:28):
I mean, so why is that? Like, why, why is it so unproductive? I mean, a lot of the people listening are pretty hard driving, you know, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs practitioners. Is that really true? I mean, I don’t know that everyone takes that as truth to go, like, you know, maximize every second of every day. And it’s kind of like some of, some of us, that’s kind of how we got to where we are. Right. And so you’re saying, well, Hey, you should, you know but I think the oxygen metaphor is so good, but like, I guess what, what gives you so much confidence or like to go like, Hey, that’s not actually productive. Like at some point that caps out,
JF (04:09):
First of all, we can look into, I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs authors, writers authors, speakers, but first you, if you start with the corporate heck a heck hole, if there’s a appropriate way to say that, of course work that there, there, there is the easiest place to quantify the problem. So when you ask employees, what part of their work feels wasteful and meaningless, and like, it’s just a drain on their entire lives. They will report 20 to 30% of the tasks that they touch are stupid. And if you take those 20 to 30% of those illogical, unnecessary nonsense tasks, and you quantify them based on the salary value of that human being per hour, you can actually come up with a distinct number. It’s a million dollars for every 50 people annually is spent on work that has no value.
RV (04:57):
Whoa, say that again?
JF (05:00):
Yeah. I’ll give you even a visual. It’s a million for $51 million for every 50 employees. But that means, think of it as if you took 12 out of every 50 people and just let them eat Doritos and play video games all day long. And that was their entire contribution. That’s the level of waste.
RV (05:15):
That’s the job that I want right there. Retos and play videos and the crash. Yeah. The rest of you suckers are cranking out the work and getting stuff done. 12 out of 50 people just not doing anything
JF (05:30):
So that, and that wasteful that willingness to let that much waste in the system comes from the fact that we worship activity and not productivity, and that they are two different things that just because we’re moving and checking boxes and doing doesn’t mean we’re actually producing, building, creating something of value. So that common misperception is the seat of the corporate example. Then you move to all of us, the speakers, the the people who are just working it, yes, we have to work incredibly hard to get where we’re going. But little sips of thoughtful time are necessary to make sure that we’re not working. Blisteringly hard in the wrong direction. In order to, if you take a moment to reflect on where you’d like to go, what’s your highest value? What is the most important thing that I can touch next? These critical junctures of thoughtfulness change the nature and the trajectory of the work that you do do so that it’s not just mania heading in any direction that you, that your head that you’re pointed.
RV (06:28):
And I think that’s actually a pretty accurate description of personal brands. It’s kind of mania, right? It’s like, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Snapchat. I’m doing my podcast. I’m like trying to do a speaking gig. I’m working on a webinar, I’m building a funnel, I’m writing email copy. I’m doing my group, my, my graphic design. I’m updating my press kit, like, right. Like, and, and, and so are you saying to work less, like, is that the, is that the goal here is to, is to do less work less?
JF (06:58):
No. For, for those corporate people I’m talking about, we want to remove that wasteful work, but I’m not talking specifically about working less. Although I do think that there are fascinating framings being put out now by people like Michael Hyatt, who’s entire giant teams on a six hour day and finding it exactly as effective as an eight hour day was. So there, there are interesting people playing in the work less space, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that without the ability to pause in between the activities of what you do, you can’t oxygenate those efforts correctly. So let me, let me walk you through what it looks like in real life. When you finish writing the pot there, script for your blog, and then you’re going to move to checking your new headshots. And then you’re going to check to w oh, your Instagram feed.
JF (07:42):
If you’re jumping from one to the other, to the other, you don’t have time to do a few things. There’s no time to digest the lessons or reflections from what you just did. And there’s no time to plan appropriately to be spectacularly. Excellent. In the next thing that you pick up, there’s no time to shift your mind from human being interactive on Monaco mode to deep creative work mode. When we don’t have transition time. And the, those little spaces open up the day and they infuse it with thoughtfulness, creativity, purposefulness, they allow us to catch ourselves before mistakes, like answering too fast to an email or responding too fast to a question. This habit of thoughtfulness, interlaced affects everything.
RV (08:27):
Yeah. So you’re not this isn’t like a, you know, take a six month sabbatical yoga retreat every year. And like, do that really? You’re saying thought, I love that, that last phrase, you said thoughtfulness interlaced throughout the day. You know, and I was thinking about it makes the first thing that came to my mind was that, so a brand builders group, we’re a classic example of this. Like we started growing really fast, got a marketing team. And then the marketing team went off in a thousand directions and everyone started doing stuff. We literally got less results with like 20 people in marketing than we used to get with two. Because everyone was like, they just start, they were just competing for, they were just competing for priorities. Nothing was actually going forward. It was all like going sideways. And then we’re like, okay, we’re going to do one launch a month. There’s only one thing that we do every month. Because even if you only do one thing a month, you’re not actually doing one thing a month, you’re doing that thing. But you’re optimizing the thing that you did the month before. And you’re preparing for the thing that is coming next. And we had no space and time before that, cause it was just a constant like race. And you’re saying that happens all the time, low value,
JF (09:51):
Quantity work. If you think of that phrase, it’s not something that you want to be producing as a company, but many of us are generating low value, quantity work. And one of my favorite metaphors for this as if I, I spoke to a mole scientist once who studies moles, little, the little burying kind of critter, and what they do in mole land is they don’t have any specific direction that they dig, but they dig very, very fervently for the entire day. So they just put their little paws up and they just go in any direction. They happen to be digging and then they give it their all. And they really work hard all day long, but that’s, we don’t want to be moles. We don’t want to be randomly going in any direction. We want to be purposeful and thoughtful. So it just a minute ago, you and I were talking in prep about I’m four weeks away from book launch, the craziest starting, the, the opportunities are raining down.
JF (10:45):
Should I be writing to clients? Should I be on podcasts, should be, I’d be writing special print media. And I took a minute and we got slow. And we said, what? I said, what is the one thing? What are the two or three things? And just that deceleration will kick in your own wisdom. It’s just a matter of getting off the speed for a minute to say, oh right, wait a minute. I’m just realizing that I just prepped 400 emails on a project that I’m not really invested in, but I’m just getting off on the sending, sending, sending, sending, sending. And if we take a minute to think before that you can avert all that work.
RV (11:22):
Yeah. I wonder how much of it is like, it’s really weird. There’s like because on the one hand it’s overwhelming and exhausting and daunting and all of those things. But on the other hand, it’s almost like we do this busy-ness as a defense mechanism from having to like stop and really go is what I’m doing really matter. Is this really smart? Do I really even enjoy the thing that I’m doing? And it, it feels like we do that. It’s almost like we’re addicted to moving fast. Cause it like prevents us from having to sit with our thoughts
JF (12:03):
And deep work is really scary. So the Cal Newport style deep work where we go in and we create things that are like one gorgeous piece of sushi. That’s sitting on a platter that’s so rich and so flavorful that you don’t need anything with it. That that’s just spectacular. That kind of work to produce tight. Gorgeous, rich work is really hard. And it’s really lonely. If you’re into any degree in extroverted person, you like relational tasks, I write to you and marketing writes to me and sales writes to marketing and I chat with you and I’m on zoom with you. So all of that relational stuff, factors in to what we miss when we try, try to slow things down and do quieter work. So there are a lot of addictive and habitual and adrenaline based reasons that we avoid it. But sometimes that’s where the gold is.
RV (12:54):
Talk to me about that when it comes to writing your book, because this is the world that you’ve been living in here for the last several months is like you go from being this incredibly successful speaker and you got this training company and you’re working with major companies. And you know, like when I’d say I’ll Dulia to speaking at events, I mean, she’s, she’s doing events where there’s 10,000 people in the room. There’s there’s 85,000, a hundred half a million people watching live 7,500 in a room, 30,000 watching on a live stream, a big time stuff. You go from doing all that to be like, Hey, your manuscript’s due in four months. And now you are, this is that’s exactly what you just went through, right? Like how was that experience for you?
JF (13:40):
That’s why I didn’t write a book for 20 years because know, being alone. I don’t like that. Just me and the empty word document is a terrifying place. I will clean the kitchen. I will check social. I will research orthodontic things that my children need. I’ll do anything to try to avoid being in that scary, lonely place of just me and the paper. But the way that it worked for me was when the moment was ready, the right agent and the right message and it all kind of crystallized. And then I had to figure out what the writing process was going to be for an extroverted person who was scared of the quiet. And what worked for me was always writing on retreat. My writing style was that for a year and a half, I went away one day a week and wrote, and there was no email, no children, no husband, no same environment, nothing I’d go to a hotel or I’d go somewhere else. And I would be alone with the book and that kind of compartmentalization has always worked really wonderfully for me. And it worked really, really well for this.
RV (14:45):
So, so I want to talk about the editing process. So I love that and I, I right. The same way except both of my books I wrote in a week. So I do it. I just, I like disappear from the world for like seven days. And just, it’s like a, it’s like a what do they call it? When you like binge like a ranger, like a bender, it’s like a binder. It’s like a writing bender that and, and cause it’s the same way. It’s like the only way I can really like get focused is to like be, you know, just to remove from everything. But then you actually get the book written and people are always, people are always off when they talk to me because they’re like, I just got my, I just finished my manuscript and I go, congratulations.
RV (15:35):
You’re 20% of the way done from having an hour towards having that actual book. Oh, so true. They’re so mad at because it’s like, I think writing is one of those things you can hear. It’s you know, Mitch Hedberg used to describe pancake. Do you know who Mitch Hedberg is? No. Oh my gosh. He’s one of my favorite comedians. He died of a drug overdose, which is sad, but he was really brilliant. And he used to say, it’s like pancakes at the beginning, they’re all warm and fluffy. And then by the end, you’re just fricking sick of them, like writing the same way. Like you’re like, oh, this is so exciting. I’m writing my book. And then, and then it’s just like, then you have to edit. And you’re like, I’m so sick of this. I want to read. So talk to you about the
JF (16:23):
Editing. How about when you’re done, I’ll go back to that. But how about when you’re done editing and you finally get done with these sticky cold pancakes and then they go now, the next year of your life is going to be being on podcasts, repeating back the same pancakes for the rest of your career. It’s very difficult. The funny thing about the editing process was how unprepared underprepared I was for what exactly was going to happen. So I’m with a major publisher. Okay.
RV (16:49):
For the editing pro you were under prepared for the editing process
JF (16:53):
Completely because so Harper Collins is our publisher. I have a wonderful, wonderful publisher named Hollis. And on the day of January 1st, when we turned in the book, we had a party because the book was dead and I turned it in. It was finished. And then they send back around about a month later and you sit down and go, oh my God, there’s two days of work in copy editing and checking all this stuff in this round to read it again. And then you send back all those changes. Then they send back another round over the course of three or four months. They sent back round after round on the third round, after being on retreat, intensely editing round one and round two of what I thought was a completed manuscript. I sent back 290 changes on the third round. So some of that is just my own perfectionistic tendencies and how much I care about this particular book, being a spectacularly unique and beautiful book, but it’s not done when you think it’s done.
JF (17:45):
You think it’s done when you turn it in? It, it isn’t even done until the day that the printers rip it out of their hands and say, we have to have this now, or we’re going to miss the deadline. You just keep tweaking it. And then as I told you, before smart people start to say things that you wish you’d written in it, and now it’s finished and you go, oh my gosh. If I just had that conversation with Joel, before we locked the manuscript, I would have completely changed a, B or C. And I’m prepared for that to just keep going.
RV (18:14):
I mean, this is, what’s crazy too about a book, right? Is like, you go through this, you know, and it’s, it’s a lifetime to build a platform. Then you give a proposal, you get an agent, you get a deal, you do the manuscript. There’s 75,000 edits. Then you’re just exhausted. Like you ran a hundred mile race and they’re like, congratulations. You’ve reached the starting line, which is now you’re going to do your book promotion for the next eight, eight months. And then at the end of it, all you sell the thing for $22 and 50 95 cents. Meanwhile, you could throw your iPhone on record a video course and sell it for 500 bucks by this afternoon. And that’s, but that’s what I think makes books so beautiful and still so relevant and so important. It’s it’s the work that you do. It’s the, the amount of space and oxygen that, that went into building this beautiful thing and over and over and refining it.
JF (19:09):
It’s a lot of great things. I mean, it is a, if you got a decent advance, you’re going to be very old and gray before you even see a dollar of that 22. So that’s another thing is this is the most free work I’ve ever done in my career over the last three, three years on this book. But the beautiful thing about writing a book is it takes content that is in a raw form and it causes you to sit with that content and tweak it and play with it and marinated and step away from it and come back to it. And the end of it, you open it up almost as if you hadn’t been part of the process and you say, this is wonderful. And it, it comes to fruition like a child growing into him, you know, like a boy growing into a man there’s this day where you look at and go, wow, I have goosebumps right now telling you the story of getting goosebumps about looking at it, because you think now it’s ready. It works. It’s clean, it’s easy. Maybe it’s enjoyable. And wow. It came together and that’s, that’s a Mo the most thrilling, creative process that I’ve ever been involved in. And that has nothing to do with whether it’s sells or makes me famous or makes a dollar from here.
JF (20:16):
And this,
RV (20:18):
Everything you just described, the beauty of that, which we’ve in the context of this conversation, been talking about in these, what we would call and take the stairs harvest season of focus, but it’s almost like white space in a minute to think it’s almost like you get a little bit of that in everything you do. If you just breathe for a second, you kind of infuse that same level of creativity, wonder and innovation into your entire day. Just like little bits of it. Time,
JF (20:54):
If you have the habit of the pause inside your bones, what happens is that it naturally shows up for you without trying. So on those writing days, I would write or edit for 12 hours. But if I happen to catch out of the corner of my eye, a pretty sunset while I was writing, or if I happened to notice that my hands were really enjoying the warmth of my tea cup while I was holding it, it would be second nature for me to pause and go with that, go with that for a minute. If I was writing and I had a little grain of an idea in some critical voice at all, that’s silly or not worth it. My habit of the pause would tell me to stop and hang with it for a minute before dismissing it. And so what happens is once the pause becomes your practice, it comes to you naturally like breathing and you get the sense of pausing going, going pausing. I definitely believe that there are harvest seasons. I believe that balance is like the stock market and, and it goes up and it goes down. And right now I’m in a book launch. And not as balanced as I am in other times, but if you can think of it as an interlacing, just a beautiful sign curve of go stop, go stop, go stop. I believe that you’ll be stronger, longer and better in the work that you do.
RV (22:08):
That is marvelous. So w the, book’s called a minute to think where do you want people to go to read about it? Find out about it, connect with you,
JF (22:19):
Juliet funt.com is where you can get the book. Hopefully that you’ll share with your team, because we have a very, very strong impetus for people to discuss this work together. So it comes to life. When you say, I think, what do you think about this? And how can you apply it and what feels safe in the world of busy-ness to take pauses? It’s a wonderful thing. And they’re, they can also take something called the busy-ness test, which is a quiz that any of your listeners can go to to understand where are the most pernicious thieves of their own time, and where do they come from and how they can stop them uniquely for them?
RV (22:51):
Love it. Well, we’ll link up to Juliet funt.com and also the book a minute to think it is called, check it out, profound, powerful, insightful both accelerating and decelerating to your life at the same time. Really, really a magic Joel. I’ve read through the entire manuscript. I absolutely love it. Fully endorsed this book, check it out. Juliet, thank you for making time for us. And we wish you the best. Always. Great. Thanks.