Business Innovators Radio - Interview With Dan Clark Hall of Fame Speaker, NY Times Bestselling Author of 37 books and Master Storyteller

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Dan is an alumnus of the University of Utah (psychology); a University Professor, Podcast Host, New York Times Best Selling Author of 35 books, and a primary contributing author to the Chicken Soup fo...r the Soul series. One of Dan’s famous storie,s ‘Puppies For Sale’ was made into a film at Paramount Studios starring Jack Lemmon.As a master storyteller, Dan has been published in over 50 million books in 40 languages worldwide; has appeared on over 500 TV and radio programs, including Oprah, Glenn Beck, NPR, and Voices of America/Radio Free Europe. Dan teaches to focus on what matters most, which is what lasts the longest – knowing the goal is not to live forever, but to create something that will.Learn More: https://danclark360.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-dan-clark-hall-of-fame-speaker-ny-times-bestselling-author-of-37-books-and-master-storyteller

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Dan Clark, who's a Hall of Fame speaker and New York Times bestselling author of 37 books and a master storyteller. Dan, welcome to the program. Thanks, Mike. You're a legend.
Starting point is 00:00:34 It's an honor to be with you. Oh, you're the legend. And we're not going to talk about all 37 books because that would give us about nine days worth of content. But wow, what a body of work. That is just in that one little piece. And I know we've got so much more to talk about. But I want to just dive into this concept here of, you know, like the drive to success. What drives you?
Starting point is 00:00:56 And from your background, give us a little bit of your story. and what has your entrepreneurial journey been like to this point in your career? And I always emphasize the word at this point because I don't care how old you are. You know, you could be 70, 80, 90, 100, and you might have 15 or 20 more years of journey and building and growing. So with that thought in mind, what's your entrepreneurial journey been like to this point in your career? You know, I want to amalgamate answers to kind of the three questions and end with what drives me because it all is relevant in my life. I believe that entrepreneurs, when you meet a serial entrepreneur, they want to fix things. They just have an inherent ability to look at things, not for what they are, but for what they have the power to become.
Starting point is 00:01:45 They can make it better. And I suppose my entire life as an athlete, I was clearly a serial entrepreneur because I was always trying to figure out a way to tweak my running style to eliminate. wasted motion so I could be faster, how to increase my leap, my vertical, how to become a better football player, a better basketball, a better baseball player. I've always searched and sought excellence in everything I do, believing that the only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday. That's how I was raised. No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future. And so I've always been fired up about becoming the very best version of myself.
Starting point is 00:02:33 And yet I was, I relegated myself into being an athlete. I thought that's who I was. And that's how I got all my attention, all my fame and glory. And I was playing football and baseball at the University of Utah. Excuse me. As a student athlete, a scholarship athlete, I was a projected number one draft pick by the Oakland Raiders into the National Football League. I'd had an invitation trial by the Kansas City Royals at a high school as a baseball pitcher.
Starting point is 00:03:07 So my entire identity was I am an athlete, and that's all I thought I was. That's who I thought I was. And all of a sudden, one day in practice, the coach blew a whistle, and another player and I ran full speed into each other in a violent head-on collision, smashing my right shoulder into the cutting edge of my fiberglass pads and we slammed to the ground. And when Lyle got off of me, I had compressed the seven cervical vertebrae in my neck. I had severed the axillary nerve in my right deltoid muscle and I'd suffered a great level to concussion, which is one of the worst kinds of concussions you have. I was in such bad shape. My eye drooped. I had loss of speech. I
Starting point is 00:03:58 didn't talk anymore, which momentarily returned. My right side was paralyzed to my right arm dangled helplessly my side. And it left me paralyzed for 14 months, Mike. I went to 16 doctors, 15 of whom told me I would never get any better. I would never recover. And I wonder how many folks listening have heard that in your life. And what happens if you believe it, you never get any better? And my life spiraled downward until I hit what?
Starting point is 00:04:28 I thought was rock bottom. And now that I fought my way back to a 95% recovery, that the most frequently asked questions are these, which are answers to your question, Mike. What do I mean? I thought I hit rock bottom. If our listeners today remember nothing else I say, please remember no matter how tough times get,
Starting point is 00:04:52 no matter how hard things are, nobody ever hits rock bottom. We hit rock foundation. We hit rock belief. We hit the baseline core values and governing principles on which we were raised. And the other frequently asked question is, why did I keep going to so many different doctors? And the answer is I kept going from doctor to doctor until I found one who believed I would get better. And then the last two questions are these.
Starting point is 00:05:20 Why did I stay paralyzed for 14 months? Why did I stay paralyzed for so long? and the answer is I was asking the wrong questions. I was asking the doctors how to get better when I should have been asking myself, why? And once we answer why, figured out the how-to becomes clear and simple. And the last question answers your question about what drove me, what drives me. When I started to get better, I was asked to speak to a high school football team. I spoke before seven other eight games. They won the state championship. The high school principal invited me to come and speak to the student body.
Starting point is 00:05:57 He called four friends. I spoke at five schools that year, 13 schools the next year. And then I got a contract to speak to every high school and junior high in the state of Utah. And after I had spoken to 170 schools finally tweaking my storytelling and my message of resilience, Zig Zigler played a major role in my recovery because when I was down, when my wheels fell off my wagon. When I lost my identity, I was truly suicidal. I was an athlete,
Starting point is 00:06:31 and I didn't realize that playing football was just what I did, not who I am as a man. And when we identify ourselves in terms of what we do instead of who we are, we become human doings instead of human beings. Unacceptable of significance is what we seek. So Zig comes rolling into town to speak on one of the big stages in the arena on a PMA rally,
Starting point is 00:06:53 And I positioned myself backstage so that when he was over, I could just basically save, Zig, you've saved my life. Can I take you to dinner? He said, I'm coming back to Salt Lake City in three weeks, called Lori Majors in my office, see what we can work out. He allowed me to pick him up at the airport. I took him to the hotel in a 15-minute drive. And there, he said, is there someplace I can see your high school assembly? And I'd already rented a little room off the foyer at his little slide. show and some stuff. I gave him my 45-minute speech. He stood up, tears in his eyes, tears in
Starting point is 00:07:31 my eyes, mono and mono, gave me a standing ovation. Next week, he flew me down to Dallas, Texas, to speak to his corporation. Next week, he sponsored me in the National Speakers Association. I met him in Chicago for six days. Next week, he invited my wife and I had newly wedged down to Dallas to his five-day born-to-win seminar, which changed our lives forever. And it was the there that he introduced me to somebody who introduced me to Nancy Reagan, who invited me into the Reagan White House to take Mrs. Reagan's just say no program to all 50 states. So between 1983 and 1989, I spoke to three high schools every day, 15 a week for 140 school days a year, and then did 100 college university campuses every year, transitioned into corporate arena in about
Starting point is 00:08:20 1991 and 6,000 speeches in 77 countries later inducted in the national or the professional speakers Hall of Fame. It was all because of six degrees of separation. I'm trying to figure out a way to just become whole again. Instead of chasing fame and fortune, I knew I had to focus in on purpose and being whole. And then the last question that you asked me, What drives me to keep doing this after all these years of 40-plus-year career, still at the top of my game speaking 80 times a year to the major Fortune 100 companies in the world?
Starting point is 00:09:02 Is Mike, I believe in my heart of hearts that there is one man and one woman in every single one of my audiences who is hurting as badly as I was. I lost my identity. And if there's something I could say that would keep someone from killing themselves taking their life, If there's something I could say that would save a marriage that would kickstart someone's entrepreneurial million dollar idea and just fire them up to never say never, it's worth it to me. And proudly, I've never missed a speech in all these years. And sometimes my flights have been canceled, but I've rented a car. One time I drove seven hours through the badlands of Nebraska to show up in Rapid City, South Dakota,
Starting point is 00:09:46 in time to be the closing speaker of a three-day conference. And I was the only speaker who showed up because of inclement weather. Never forgotten that. I'm not trying to suggest I'm more noble. I just know that this isn't just a job for me. It's a calling to change the world one story at a time. And I'm so grateful for the privilege of the platform that has allowed me to do what I do on a daily basis. Long answer, brother.
Starting point is 00:10:15 Now you're afraid to ask me. Well, I was going to say, Dan, we could unpack that for about the next hour, but a couple things jumped out at me. You mentioned six degrees of separation and you mentioned Zig Ziglar. And the thing that I would like to say is I would say to you that there would be someone out there that may have a Zig Ziglar type of an introduction that they do not take action on. So yes, you connected with him who then connected you with, who then connected you with and there was those six degrees of separation. But talk a little bit about what it is in your life that led you to that realization that
Starting point is 00:10:54 there are opportunities in front of me. And I'm not going so fast 100 miles an hour that I'm going to miss out on them. I'm going to notice this. I'm going to take action. I'm going to show gratitude. And if you came off as a cocky young person to Zig Zigler, he would have patted you on the head and said, hey, nice to meet you. Next.
Starting point is 00:11:10 But somehow, some way you made that connection and you look to take. take it to the next level. So I just think that there's opportunity all around every one of us, but we tend to keep our eyes glued to the wrong thing and structure our day's schedule so much that we don't have a moment's notice to be aware of these opportunities to then take proper advantage of that. What do you say to someone about that? Well, Mike, the reason why you're a legendary, you ask such good evocative questions. I love you already, brother. I honestly. You know, I've taught public speaking for 11 years at the university level in the MBA programs. And I teach my students the fundamentals of communication, the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, the fundamentals of life.
Starting point is 00:12:00 Number one, seek to bless, not impress. So in a public speaking setting, I ask people, if you're nervous before you speak, it means you think it's about you. But if you're excited before you speak, you know it's about them. So if I rise to the occasion, refuse to lose and connect with my audience, and my audience members leave impressed with me, I've completely blown it. But if they leave impressed with themselves, empower that they can do what I say they can do, that they can do at least what I've done, then I've connected, I've empowered them. So when we go to networking events, like most of the time, notice,
Starting point is 00:12:40 I challenge everybody listening in the sound of our voices. to just pay attention, most people who come to a networking event, a mastermind, whatever you want to call it, they come with a personal agenda and a pocketful of business cards with the mindset of what can you do for me? What's in it for me? Yep. Exactly. And what I've learned a long time ago, which you're famous for too, Mike, is that when we have a service before self mindset, we turn every sales pitch into a serve pitch. and when we come with the attitude, how may I serve you?
Starting point is 00:13:15 What can I possibly do to help you heal, to help you become better today than you were yesterday? You know, it's more than a cliche to say that if you're hurting, all you have to do is find another person who is hurting and help them. And two people are healed. Yeah. So, you know, your question and your comment, your commentary is so profound. because when we go into any situation, one on one on 20, one on 200,
Starting point is 00:13:44 one on 20,000, an arena, you can see my photos on my website, Dan Clark.com to see I used to speak at all the huge arenas to 30, 40,000 folks still do. When you have an attitude of gratitude and you come with, oh my gosh,
Starting point is 00:14:00 how may I serve you, how can I open up my Rolodex? Boy, that's a word from the past, brother. I open up my circle of influence to connect you with someone who might help you heal, who might help you take you to the next level, and what goes around comes around. And I really believe that if you just have a simple service before self mindset, it's amazing how the law of psychological reciprocity validates itself on a daily basis,
Starting point is 00:14:34 where when you serve, when you listen, when you ask questions and you try to figure out how you can help someone else, it creates a moral obligation in a conversation if I have made you feel wanted, important, lovable, capable, and that you can succeed. It's created a moral obligation for you to make me feel equally wanted, important, lovable, capable, and that I can succeed before that conversation or that interaction ends with the mindset that when the water and the lake goes up, all the boats rise together. So I think of every, you know, I'm sitting here in my library and we laughed before we came on air.
Starting point is 00:15:12 This is my I love me room. It's my man cave. But I've flown every single fighter jet, all the bombers. You know, we heard about the B2 bomber, the 37 hour nonstop flight when we went into Iran. I flown that B2 bomber out of Whiteman Air Force Base. I've been up into space for five hours sitting in the sounds of silence looking at the breast. looking at the breathtaking curvature of the earth, gazing into the endless blackness of the universe,
Starting point is 00:15:40 pondering eternity in my place, and I've had these extraordinary experiences, and I'm a civilian. And everybody says, oh, my gosh, even those, my military friends, my four-star generals, I was a Pentagon appointee for five and a half years, and now I serve on the Board of Visitors of the Air Force Academy.
Starting point is 00:15:58 All of my military friends and colleagues, especially those pilots, those fighter pilots and bomber pilots, they asked me, how have I had more time in every aircraft, more seat time and experience than they've had, and I'm a civilian. And the answer is I've given over 350 free speeches to the military,
Starting point is 00:16:20 and when the commander, when the four-star general knows, I have volunteered my time and whatever talent I have time and time again to fire up our troops to address the serious issues of suicide, of divorce, of sexual harassment assault, of strength through diversity, all the key issues that I love to talk about and address with our troops. And they know I've volunteered my time
Starting point is 00:16:45 and have never charged them one dime in a speaker's honorarium. Eventually they say, Dan, what can we do for you? And I'm like, I want to fly an F-18. I want to do exactly what Tom Cruise did in Top Gun Maverick. And I've flown that exact same fighter jet, done all the things you saw on Maverick, Top Gun.
Starting point is 00:17:01 Top Gun Maverick. I hope people listening have watched the movie more than 10 times like me. So I'm sitting here in my library looking at all these photographs. I've served on the Olympic Committee, Winter Olympics in 2002, and I carried the Olympic torches right behind me on my shelf. It's all because of service before self. How can I serve my fellow men and women? What can I do for you?
Starting point is 00:17:25 And eventually what goes around comes around. You know, one thing that you said that makes me think of another question, which is this, back of the day when you were growing and building your network and getting that first speaking gig and that second speaking gig, you know, you mentioned rock bottom, you know, whatever hits rock bottom, but at some point you were low and then you took a step forward and then another step forward. And before you had all of the accolades, there were those times I'm confident of that it was not the hockey stick projection. trajectory of, hey, this year I did 497 talks and then the next year even more. When you were on that climb, what can you remember were maybe a failure or a hurdle or a hiccup or a speed bump, whatever you want to think of it, where you experience like, ooh, that was a failure. I didn't do everything right.
Starting point is 00:18:21 And I'm going to need to now go back and assess and tweak. So I think that too many times we all think that, oh, look at the entrepreneur of the speaker's success. I went from ground zero to, you know, excellence in three years and never had anything negative happen. Talk a little bit about a couple of the failures or breakdowns you experienced. You're so good. I'm just smiling going, do you have like five hours, bro? I probably do. What's so real about life is that we need to be willing to fail our way to success.
Starting point is 00:18:54 success. Yeah. And if we woke up every morning and said life is hard, it changes our whole attitude. It changes our whole day. So that when we get down, when we get knocked down, we don't stay down. We understand that you never lose if you always learn. So the answer, I'll just make it a really quick answer because it's such a great question. Everybody on this call can relate to. when I teach my classes in public speaking, and I have my course speak like a pro or story selling, I remind everybody that we have to be ordinary before we're extraordinary, that people don't give a rats walk a zoodle if I've ever succeeded.
Starting point is 00:19:34 They want to know, Clark, did you ever fail? Did you ever fall down? And then what did you do about it? So you'll never meet a strong person with a weak past. Pain is a signal to grow, not to suffer. Once we learn the lesson the pain is teaching us, pain goes away. So in life, there's no mistakes, only lessons. So one of my favorite quotes that will tee up my answer is that under pressure, I learned this from Navy SEAL sitting around a
Starting point is 00:20:00 bonfire in Iraq and Afghanistan the first time I went back in 2005. Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion. You fall to your level of training. That's why we train and prepare and practice so hard. So the reality is pressure is not something that's naturally there. It's created when you question your own ability. And when you know what you've been trained to do, there's never any pressure. So in that mindset, what we have to do is understand that failure is a blessing if we learn from it. Yeah. And if we can all embrace the mindset of a champion athlete who walks into a gym who walks into a weight room with the primary purpose and intention to create discomfort on purpose, we will accelerate our growth and become better today than we were yesterday every
Starting point is 00:21:00 single day guaranteed. Because when an athlete goes into a gym, we put more weight on the bar today than we had on it yesterday. On purpose, we're creating discomfort. We spend one more minute on the pre-core or on the elliptical than we did the day before. The brain damage that occurs in most people is when we go into the gym, when we go into hot yoga, core power, and it's 100 plus degrees and we're sweating and we're stretching and we're pushing ourselves to our ultimate capacity and potential as a human being. The reality is most people who go into a gym or into a yoga studio
Starting point is 00:21:40 with the intention to create discomfort and do something hard that they're, really don't want to do, but they do it anyway. The brain damage occurs when we exit and we expect life to be cushy. We want Princess parking in every mall. We want a sale in every store. We want 90-degree weather with a breeze blown over our right shoulder out of Malibu Canyon. And that's not reality. So I needed to put that preamble in, Mike, so people listening can make sure that they don't just let discomfort happen, but we create a culture of resilience where we make discomfort happen, where we push. You know, I'm going to throw in something right here, Dan, because it just came to my mind
Starting point is 00:22:28 and it just makes your point exactly right. We should not run from discomfort because of what you're saying, but here's an example I've heard many, many times. And you've probably heard this before, but there's this little boy that was watching this moth, try to get out of the cocoon. And it was struggling and struggling. So he reached down and opened it up and helped it. And the moth died.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Why? Because the moth or the butterfly needs to have that struggle to get out on its own to energize the muscles to get the blood flowing so that the wings work. The minute you help it out and break it open, all of a sudden it didn't have that struggle, that tension, and now it dies. So we need to have that struggle so that we can rise. And the same analogy, too, of like, you mentioned flying airplanes.
Starting point is 00:23:14 Well, don't you know that you fly into the headwind so that you lift up? You don't run away from the headwind. I love it. Yep. Brilliant. And you know what? I'm an old man and a professional speaker, and I've never heard that moth story. Good for you.
Starting point is 00:23:28 Oh, okay. Well, Google it. You'll probably get a better example of it. But it's the same. The concept is there. I think that is just powerful. So let's think about something here. During the challenges that you experienced throughout your career, how did Faith play a role
Starting point is 00:23:41 in you facing them and overcoming them. Another great question, Mike. So both faith and fear demand that we believe in something we can't see. And so it's always a choice. And we all know that faith cannot exist in fear and fear cannot exist in faith. We have to be willing to separate the two. However, most people confuse faith with belief. Faith is faith without works is not.
Starting point is 00:24:11 not faith at all. And what happens is most of us try to interface faith with hope, thinking that they're exactly the same and they're not. French philosopher Pascal, he said hope is very interesting. He said most people, no, he said, too many people live their lives hoping to be happy, but because they only hope, they never really are. My two sense, it's like, Somebody's waiting for someone to ask them to the senior prom and they've never even taken the time to learn how to dance. Yeah. Well, we hear our whole entire lives as men of faith, have faith and pray. Pray always and be believing.
Starting point is 00:24:55 Have faith, have faith. At some point, we've got to get up off our knees and stop praying. Keep that prayer in our heart. Stop praying and do everything in our power to help God answer our prayers because when we pray to God, God answers our prayers. because when we pray to God, God answers our prayers through other people. It takes us full circle of service before self. So let me just give you a couple of analogies. If you and I are in a car and we pull into a McDonald's drive-thru,
Starting point is 00:25:24 and we order a Big Mac fries and a Diet Coke, and we pull over into the parking lot, and we being men of faith, you say, Mike, I say, you say, Dan, could you offer a little bit of, blessing on the food. And I say, dear Lord, please bless this food that it will strengthen, nourish our bodies, and do us the good we need. That ain't never going to happen. God will not be mocked. If we're leading a youth group and we meet in the church parking lot and we're going to have a caravan a couple hours down the road to some campsite and you as a church leader say,
Starting point is 00:26:04 Dan, could you offer a prayer for safety? And I say, dear Lord, bless us that we will arrive safely, that no harm or accident will befall us. And then we get in our vehicles and drive 100 miles an hour without wearing our belts. That ain't never going to happen. God will not be mocked. So I have a slogan that I keep in my wallet. Pray as though everything depends on God and work as though everything depends on you. Yep.
Starting point is 00:26:33 because too many people in the born-again world, they believe they're saved, but they don't understand the journey of discipleship. They think, okay, I've made it. I got my ticket into the stadium. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want a ticket into the stadium. If I'm a spectator, that's the most boring thing on the planet when I'm an able athlete. I want to freaking play on the field. I want to be on the winning team.
Starting point is 00:26:59 I want to make sure that I know the fundamentals and I'm not. I can make everybody else around me better so that we do win. And in the ecclesiastical world and as men of faith, the ultimate victory is heaven. Why in the world would we just want to watch other people play? When we have an opportunity to serve others and step it up as a calling, instead of just a job and not just exist, but survive? No, thrive as literal sons and daughters of Almighty God. So faith plays such a role in my life because if we are lazy, if we're living off the government,
Starting point is 00:27:40 if we're just taking life so easy, we are offending God. We have been hardwired to progress. And the happiest people on this world are those who are happier today than they were yesterday through serving others. So faith is huge to me. But I pray every morning and I pray every night. and my prayers are not, you know, when we get in the family car back in the day when my children were still at home and when we'd go on a family vacation, maybe drive the 12 hours to Los Angeles
Starting point is 00:28:14 from Salt Lake City, Utah, say that we're going to offer a prayer. I could not, as a dad, as a man of faith, I could not pray that we would arrive safely. I prayed that we would make, that I would make responsible decisions that would allow us to arrive safely because of what I was able to throw into the mix. So our children, when they would leave, we could pray all we wanted to that they would make responsible decisions and our girls wouldn't come home from a day pregnant. What they needed to understand is that action, faith is action. I can have all the faith in the world that I'm going to lose weight.
Starting point is 00:28:55 And if I just keep eating donuts, it ain't never going to happen. Yeah. I can believe and I can hope. that my flight's going to leave today on time on Delta Airlines and fly me to Cincinnati. But unless I get in my car and be responsible enough to plan ahead in case there's traffic or an accident, unless I do my part, hope and faith do not play any role in my life unless I'm willing to do whatever I can possibly do my part. Does that make sense? It totally does. And I'll make this little bookend comment to that.
Starting point is 00:29:31 statement which, you know, like faith without works is dead. Not faith unto salvation, but, you know, we are so grateful for that salvation. We must do the good works and like the parable of the talents. Guess what? The steward that used the talents and 10x them got accolades. The one that put it in the ground and said, hey, I kept your talents, your money safe. That person got derided. He should have put it in the bank, at least got some interest.
Starting point is 00:29:55 But we need to be faithful and use our knowledge, our energy, our energy, our experience and amplify what we've been given so that it has that ripple effect in the world. So I think I think you're just spot on. And I know that we didn't go through, you know, 17 different failures or whatnot. But in your past, would you do anything differently given the chance? You're such a great interviewer. To be honest with you, I think we're the sum total of our experiences. I wouldn't be talking to you if I wasn't paralyzed, which means.
Starting point is 00:30:31 My paralysis is one of the best things that ever happened. We don't misunderstand. Not my paralysis, but who I became because of it. Yeah. And so, you know, I battled throat cancer when I was eight. You know, I was hurt in the third game on my senior in high school. I thought I was going to lose all my scholarships. I almost died in the hospital with COVID.
Starting point is 00:30:53 Seven and a half days. I was 30 minutes away from being in a bed and stop breathing. And I have all these experiences. And everything that happens in our life, Mike, is to give us experience. Yeah. You know, I happen to believe that when we die, this is just Dan Clark, six and two, but when we die, we don't lose our memory. And for some reason, I think that there's going to be community on the other side of the veil
Starting point is 00:31:20 where we can use our character, where we can use our leadership styles, our skills. For some reason, I really believe that the education and the character, that the life experiences that we had in mortality will rise with us in the resurrection. And nobody has to agree with me, but that motivates me to understand the significance of living life on the edge. And sometimes the biggest mistake someone will make in their lives, Mike, is living their lives being afraid that they will make a mistake. So I say just get up and go again and fire up every single day. And if you fail, good for you.
Starting point is 00:32:06 Remember in baseball, if you strike out seven out of ten times, you're still a superstar. Yep. And it's like you said, you alluded to earlier, you either win or you. And people go, lose, nope, you win or you learn. And I think that's a quality that many people. people don't latch on to. So in your opinion, what are some of the key attributes that people need to manage in their life so that they can face and overcome some of these unforeseen issues that they come
Starting point is 00:32:37 across in their lives? So we've mentioned several of them resilience, but what are, you know, the top one or two that you've seen that people really need to latch on to? Yeah, we need to manage the myth of rejection. So if you're in sales and someone says no, they're not saying no to you. But when you're true to your values, when you know your core values, when you know your purpose and meaning, and someone says no, or the plan doesn't work, you never change your core values. You just change the plan. It's like sailing a boat.
Starting point is 00:33:07 You change the sails depending on the direction of the wind. So we need to manage the myth of rejection in the context of a master plan. There's a master organizer. And I want to make sure I testify that there really is. God who created us. And because of that, the number one law of the universe is obedience and the greatest gift of heaven is free will agency. So we can choose yes or no, do this or do that. And to protect and guarantee that we always had our free will agency, God gave us an opposition in all things. We have to have darkness to appreciate the light. We have to have sickness to
Starting point is 00:33:46 appreciate health. We have to have justice to appreciate mercy. We have to have death to appreciate life. And because God knew we were going to be tempted with an opposition in all things and given our free will agency, he instilled in every human being, every born under this planet, an inherent ability to discern right from wrong truth from error. And we commonly call this ability our conscience. And if this is true, which I believe it is, our conscience will never fail us. Only our desire to follow it decreases as we continue to do the wrong thing. So the best example is, is if everyone on this call, if everyone on this podcast, if everyone on this broadcast was somehow in the same ballroom and we exited the ballroom together and entered a different room together
Starting point is 00:34:33 and that room stunk so badly, it was so rank and so repulsive that our eyes started to water, our noses started to bleed. It threw us into a gag reflex. Do you realize if we stayed in that smelly, stinky room for only five minutes, it would no longer smell? We had become decensitized, and it was now the new normal. How many times does that happen on our daily basis, which means that we've got to believe what Jim Rohn taught the world that we become the average of the five people we associate with the most, which means we must be willing to pay any price and travel any distance to associate with extraordinary human beings, even online, even in this broadcast, Mr.
Starting point is 00:35:17 Saunders. So I honor you. I'm going to have to jump off right now. I talked way too long. You've got a list of questions. I took way too long to answer them. I hope you'll have me back. You fascinate me.
Starting point is 00:35:31 I love you. I honor your wisdom and your success and your reputation. So I hope you'll have me back, brother. Of course. Well, let's wrap up with how can people learn more and connect with you? Just go to Dan Clark 360. And when you pull that up on your cell phone or on your computer, type in Dan Clark 360.com and a screen's going to pop up that gives you an opportunity to get in touch with me on your terms any way you want, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, my website, my email, blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 00:36:11 But more importantly, at the top of that screen, there's a little click button that says send text. If you'll push on that button right now as you're listening to this, and it will give you an opportunity to give me your full name. And then write in there Mike Saunders so I know why and where we met. And then give me your very best email. And my team will email you a free gift, either three videos on my flagship book, The Art of Significance, achieving the level beyond success,
Starting point is 00:36:45 or a free, you know, download of one of my books. We'll decide. But I hope you'll keep in touch. My website to snoop around is danclarc.com. But I would really hope that you'll keep in touch with me immediately so that we can start keeping this relationship alive and then hopefully join face-to-face, belly-to-belly at some point down the road when Mike Saunders decides to host live events.
Starting point is 00:37:14 Hey, there we go. Well, Dan, you're the man, the myth, the legend. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a true honor chatting with you today. Thank you so much, Mike. God bless you. Thanks for the questions. You're amazing.
Starting point is 00:37:28 You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.influentialentrepreneurs radio.com.

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