EntreLeadership - #157: Brian Buffini—Mindset Over Matter

Episode Date: July 25, 2016

Can small changes in your mindset, motivation or methodology double your business? Absolutely, says this week’s featured guest, Brian Buffini. And this guy knows. Brian immigrated to San Diego, California, in 1986 with basically nothing. After becoming one of the nation’s top real estate agents, he founded Buffini & Company, an organization dedicated to sharing his powerful lead-generation systems with others. Today, Buffini & Company has trained more than 3 million business professionals around the world. entreleadership.com/podcast A 90-day Plan to Jumpstart New-employee Performance Infusionsoft's Free SEO Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you at the top of the heap? If so, Brian Bafini thinks you need to be very careful. You know, if you're the best business owner in your sphere, you're in trouble. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming up on this episode.

We have some more of Ken's Mail. That's right. Your listener emails, we love them. I'm going to read a great note that I think will encourage many of you. Also, our feature conversation is with Brian Bafini from Bafini and company. This guy's a master motivator, business trainer, and an immigrant with a great story that I think will encourage many of you. And after that, I'm going to share a bit of my story. You know, you folks hear me all the time do these interviews, and rarely do I share that I

have walked many miles in the moccasins that many of you are wearing. We're going to talk about rejection. It fits beautifully into Brian Bafini's story. And rejection is an issue that we don't talk a lot about, right? It's just not fun. Many of you hear rejection. You think, well, that goes back to my days of being rejected by a girl. Well, no, it's not. It's much bigger, much deeper than that. And so we're going to talk about that. And how do you respond to it? Because it's going to happen if it has not happened yet. And we have free stuff and some announcements that you need to hear about. So all that coming to you.

All right, it's time to open up the old electronic mailbag. Ken's electronic mail. You've got mail. This email was from Nate Ryan. 28 years old, CEO of a company called Toy, spelled TOI. It's a web and mobile design agency. And he emailed us in at podcast at entreleadership.com. We'd love to hear from you as well.

We want to hear your win stories. You want to hear what you're thinking and feeling. And so I'm going to read a little bit of this. This is from, again, Nate Ryan. He says, Entree leadership has become a beacon for me. I listen to the podcast every Monday morning at the gym, and you all are constantly reminding me that I have to lead myself before I can effectively lead others.

He goes on to say that one of the challenges of becoming the CEO early on is he really bought into the title, right? And expected everybody to just kind of jump on to his vision because of his title and had a root awakening. Through the podcast, has begun to realize how he needs to lead himself and that he is a part of the team as well. So he says that over the last year, we've seen our profits go from 19% to 52%. At the same time, we've been able to improve customer happiness and employee morale. I would attribute a lot of that to the Entry Leadership podcast being there for me as I've had to constantly adapt and learn about my role on the team and my obligation to be,

both humble and confident at the same time. So there's a young leader, 28 years old, who's figuring it out. And if I can encourage you with one thing, why do we read these emails to maybe take encouragement, to take something practical away? I love that he said, I've had to constantly adapt. Boy, that's true. If there's anything that leaders have to do on a regular basis is adapt. And let me add one other A to that. When you can adapt with a good attitude, it's going to make the adaptation a whole lot easier. But sometimes we realize we have to adapt, but we have a bad attitude, and it affects all of that.

So if you can as a leader, learn to adapt with a great and positive attitude, I think you're going to see results move much quicker. So again, Nate Ryan, thank you for the email. And again, folks, we'd love to hear from you. Podcast at entreleadership.com comes right to producer Eric. We would love to share your story here on the podcast. All right, time for the old bulletin board. We have some fun stuff coming to.

you this month. I mentioned last episode. We're going to mention again a great tool from Infusionsoft. This is SEO basics for small business. That's search engine optimization. That's what we mean by SEO. And this is a simple and practical tool. Many of you are taking advantage of it. If you're running a small business or you're in a small business, this is a way for you to lead up. Trickle up leadership. It's a free resource. Download it, pass it around the office. This is huge. Making sure that you're winning when it comes to search engine optimization with everything going on the web. This is everything from URL structural, mobile device SEO, proper metadata usage, and how to select keywords. It is infusionsoft.com slash SEO basics. Infusionsoft.com slash SEO basics,

or we have the link in the show notes of this episode at entreleadership.com. Then, of course, our Entry Leadership giveaway this month, the 90-day plan to jump start new employee performance. We had Armando Lopez on early in the month to talk about this, how important it is to make sure that when you have a new team member join on day one that they're hitting the ground running. And so we give you a step-by-step checklist, guide you through everything from what to do before the hire to the first 90 days and how to avoid some onboarding mistakes that can really hinder the progress of somebody new on the team.

Here's how you get it two ways. you can text the word new hire to 33-444. That's one word. We've just squeezed new and higher together. Text the word new hire to 33-44. Or you can go to entreleadership.com. Click on the podcast this episode, and we have the link in the show notes. And our feature conversation, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, is with an immigrant, Brian Bafini.

Speaking of another well-known and super successful immigrant, Robert Hershevik, from Shark Tank, The wildly successful show. By the way, I meant to mention this to you, Eric the producer. I'm very excited about Hershevik coming because it's for the first time I can kind of connect an event speaker to my kids. They watch Shark Tank with me sometimes, and they really enjoy the pitch process. I don't know why that is, but it's very, very fascinating. But anyway, this is going to be fun. Robert Hershevik will be at our Entree Leadership Summit.

May 21 through 24, 2017. Of course, he is joining Dave Ramsey, Simon Seneca. Lou Holtz, the legendary coach, and John Maxx. Well, Pat Lynchioni, Christy Wright, and Chris Hogan. Everything you need to know about the event is at entreleadership.com slash summit. Entreleadership.com slash summit. I had the privilege of meeting our feature interview guest, Brian Bafini, about a year ago. And somebody that I did not know about.

And because I don't run in the real estate world. But I quickly learned his story and I was fascinated. I'm always fascinated by someone who comes to this country with absolutely nothing and makes it. Because, you know, listen, I was born here. You know, and America's the greatest country in the world, in my opinion. And there's so much opportunity. But you think about somebody who comes from a foreign country, completely different culture, completely different structures and systems in Ireland versus the United States.

And his story is unbelievable. We didn't have time to tell it on the... podcast interview. But I'll just give you the snapshot as it leads us beautifully into this conversation. Simply put, he comes over as a young man, leaves his family behind in Ireland, comes over to America, and has absolutely nothing. Begin small, odd jobs here and there, begins to see some opportunities, gets a little bit of momentum, but he's scraping, has a horrible, horrible accident and almost dies. And then in the slow recovery, again, without any family to take care of him, makes it through an unbelievable physical recovery and starts all over again and becomes a very successful

realtor and quickly rises up the ranks in Southern California and through his success as a realtor begins to teach other realtors how he did it and then goes on to create Befini a company which has become one of the number one coaching companies in the world and so that's a quick snapshot but the overwhelming odds that he had to overcome are so encouraging as we talk, and he's going to talk about several different things, but I want you to really lock in on mindset. I'm going to share a story for my own journey that I think will encourage those of you who right now are dealing with some delays, some detours, straight up rejection,

and you're sitting there going, I just don't know how I'm going to get where it is that I know I've got to go. And Brian's story is so, so powerful. So this is really good. Get out your pens and pencils, something to write on. If you're in the gym, you're in the car, make sure that if you have to press pause on these things, that's the beauty of this. Press pause.

And make sure you make a note, whether that be on your phone, in your head, think about it. But this is going to really encourage those of you who need to be encouraged right now. Then you need the add-a-boy, you need the add-a-girl. So here's my conversation with Brian Buffett. Well, Brian, this is such a great treat to talk with you and have had the privilege to get to know you over the last year. year or so. And you focus in so much of what you do on three M's, mindsets, motivations, and methodologies. And I want to have some fun just talking through those. And mindset is up first. And I think I'd like to ask you first to really set this for people. I think we all know

what that word is. Yeah. But I would start with what is the right mindset. What do you think the right mindset is? Sure. Well, you know, to put the three together and understand it's like three ingredients in a cake, right? It's a cord at three strands is not easily broken, right? So the mindset piece that shows you where you're going. Motivation is what gets you going, and then the methodology is what keeps you going. So when you put those three together, the mindset is how you think and what you believe. You know my background, we've been training business people for the past 20 years, and we've worked with three million folks in 37 countries. And I thought when I first began our company, all I needed to do was teach people methodologies. Here's what to do and here's how to do it.

That's all I thought I needed. And that's what I developed. So when I first started our training company, it was all how-toes. And as we started coaching people, we found the how-toes are actually the easiest part of it. They're crucial. But without the other parts, you got no chance. and so in coaching and training people, really get in the mindset, how you think, how you think. We have people who work 50 hours a week who make $100,000 a year, and we have people who work 50 hours a week who make $2 to $3 million a year. They're both the similar talents. They've from similar backgrounds, but a lot has to do with how they think.

And it's not to do with intelligence. I mean, thank God it's not to do with intelligence or, you know, I was in the bottom half of my class, as Lou Holtz used to say, right? If it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be a top half, Ken. That's right. So how you think. And as entrepreneurs, how you think is a big deal. And then secondly, what you believe, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about

the market. You know, if you have folks listening to your show that are caught up listening to the political stuff every hour of the day, you can get into a mindset of, well, if the Democrats are in, this is what's going to happen. If the Republicans are in, this is what's going to happen. And here's what I'm going to tell you. Neither one of those is particularly valuable for an entrepreneur. So what you believe about yourself, what you believe about your market.

I was at a seminar. I might have been 30 years ago. And Mark Victor Hanson, who co-authored Chicken Soup for the Soul, was on stage. And he had this trite little phrase. And he said, you can double your income as fast as you double your self-esteem. Now, I'm from Ireland. We're a little on the cynical side. And I went, well, that's a nice little phrase in California, right?

I'm just thinking it's kind of a flaky thing. You can double your income as fast, you double your self-esteem. Because my mindset at the time was, you can double the income if you double your work or double your efforts or try harder. And the truth of the matter is, I can tell you 30 years later that for me, on my journey, I have doubled my income in direct proportion to each stage of my own self-esteem, self-image, and what I believe about myself, the talents I have, the market that's out there, what I can do. believe in in my customers. If I do a great job for my customers, will my customers tell their friends? Or do I have the mindset that, oh, you know, enough is never enough. People are too demanding. You can never do enough for them. If that's what you believe, that's where you're going to be. So to me, it's a really big deal to understand that it starts with mindset. It starts with how you think,

and it starts with what you believe. And that's more important than your technical knowledge of what the service you provide or the business you run. Now, twice you have said how you think and then you said what you believe. You've said them both together, which leads me to believe there is a differential there. So let's talk about the difference. So let's talk about how you think versus what you believe. What does that mean how you think? How should an entree leader be thinking? Well, I think first of all, an openness to grow, an openness. So I don't have the answers for everything, but I'm going to go find the answers. who has knowledge, information. It could be books, it could be podcasts like this, it could be mentors, it could be, you know, for me, I would take successful people to lunch and sit them down.

I would share where I was at and ask their advice. And I would listen and I would pay attention. And I got exposed to how these folks think. You know, when I first came from Ireland, and I remember meeting my first millionaire, I was just stunned. Now, years later, I meet my first billionaire, and I was similarly stunned at just how they thought and how they thought about simple things. Sometimes how opportunity that was sitting there staring me in the face, people would come

through my business. We have a CEO of a publicly traded company who's good friends of ours. He came through a year ago. He spent two hours in our business. We have hundreds of employees, consultants, that-da-da-da-da-da-dam. And we sat down and he said, well, wow, you've got a great thing going here. And he asked a bunch of questions. And he said, have you ever thought about this?

we implemented that idea. It'll increase our bottom line by 20% this year. Because he was thinking from a different spot than we were. And when you get exposed to how different people think, and that's why shows like yours can, what you're doing here, helping people become entree leaders, it's a big deal. So what's going in your mind? What are you reading?

What are you watching? What are you listening to? Who you're hanging out with? You know, if you're the best business owner in your sphere, you're in trouble. That's good. You got to get outside of, yeah. I want to go back to, I want to stay here with this thinking thing because that's some great stuff, but I want people to know a little bit of your backstory.

We can't go through all of it, but you come over as an Irish immigrant. You've got nothing. Right. And I know your backstory, and I'll just fast forward it to say, you have some tremendous physical and emotional hardship with no support, virtually no support. and you hang in there. I want you to speak for a moment to someone who's listening right now, and I know they're out there, and they feel like they're at the end of their rope, as FDR once famously said, when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot, and hang on.

And that's where they're at. You know what it's like to hang on and then move on from that. What would you say to those people who are in the all-important world of business, and they matter? My favorite people in the world, by the way, to talk to. folks, because I came from nothing, and you know my story, I had the terrible start, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and medical problems and all that stuff. Well, you know, I recently did a show, which was called the Emigranage,

and I've been studying not only my journey, but for the past 30 years, I've been studying the most successful immigrants who've come to this country. And there's seven traits, and I wasn't going to talk about this, but I'm going to give them to you right now because I think it'll be helpful for folks listening. And these are the common traits of the rags to riches. The people who came here with nothing didn't speak the language, didn't know the culture. So the first is an openness to learn. The second is a do-what-it-takes mindset.

The third is a willingness to out-work others. The fourth is a spirit of gratitude. The fifth is a boldness to invest. A sixth, and the Ramsey organization are like this, a willingness to delay gratification. and number seven, remember where you come from. And I, whether it's Sergey Brin, who's one of the founders of Google, or whether it's the owner of the Sacramento Kings, whether it's, you know, I have example after example after example

of huge success stories of people who came here with nothing who've gone on to do great things. And these, I've seen this in my own life, but I've seen this in common characteristics of people who started out at the very bottom of the ladder. And so anyone listening to this show today, you might have been blessed to be born in this country, but you can adopt that immigrant mindset and take on those things. So openness to learn, do whatever it takes, willingness to outwork others, a spirit of gratitude,

a bonus to invest, a willingness to delay gratification, and remember where you come from. And head and rear down and go to work. It's so true. I love that. What is it about the immigrant? this, because I love this. I love that what you just laid out there, and it's so applicable to everybody, but what is it about the American dream that is so appealing to others? Because I don't think we talk about that enough on these type of podcast, you know, that we who were born here and

blessed to be born in America and essentially inherited the American dream, we don't appreciate it as much as others. What is it about the American dream capitalism that appeals to those from other countries? Well, you know, they say fish discover water last, right? And, you know, everybody, you know, it's easy to wake up in America and say, man, the fast food's too slow. The internet's slow today. You know, the mail took two days to get a letter. And those of us who grew up in other places are marveling at it. And so I think it's, it's tough when you grow up and you first of all, you have this context where everything's pretty good. For those of us who grew up in other backgrounds, countries where there weren't freedom,

countries where there wasn't free markets, and you grew up with this idea of America, and then you get here. It's just awesome. I mean, whenever I bump into, like, I love hanging out with tradesmen and people who came here with nothing, and we all have the same view. It's like, man, it's just hard to believe how good this is. You know, there's a story I tell about there's a couple. and when he was a kid, his parents were killed by the Nazis.

He was enlisted in the Hitler youth. His plane gets shut down. He escapes with him and one other kid they get to Switzerland. He ends up being a pipe fitter in Canada, comes down to Seattle, and Mary's an Irish girl. Well, this guy, he and his wife died last year, and they left their entire estate of $850,000 to the U.S. Treasury. Now, that might not be what most people would be screaming and listening to this going,

man, the guy left his money to the IRS. But the thought is this, those two people lived every day with such a sense of gratitude for where they were, for the opportunities they had, for the country they lived in. They died without children. They left their money back to the country. That tells you something. And I just think, my kids, I have six kids, as you know, my kids have grown up in large homes and flown on private jets their whole life and yada, yada, yada. However, my kids, we've trained them in this emigrant mindset. And even though they're not immigrants themselves, they have these traits.

And it's shown up in their sporting life or their work life. So you can't have it. I spend a lot of my time, Ken, traveling around the U.S., reminding Americans how great America is. It's still the greatest country in the world. People need to travel more. People need to go to other parts of the world. People need to understand. this is the greatest place in the world. The American dream is alive and well. Thomas Stanley in his

great work, whether it's the millionaire next door or the millionaire mine, says that 80% of millionaires in the U.S. in the last 20 years are immigrants. And that's because they're coming here with this mindset of an appreciation and openness and this gratitude and they're seeing an opportunity. In the Pacific Northwest, every junkyard in the Pacific Northwest is owned by a Russian. Now think about this for a second. You grow up in a country that's communist that has no opportunities. They come to America and they see, everyone sees junkyard. It's kind of messy.

That's environmentally not the greatest. What do they see? Let me get this straight. Americans want to dispose of their cars so they give you their inventory for free. Other Americans come along and they want to use parts of that inventory and they'll pay me for it. So the Russian goes, I need a field, I need a sign and I need the ability to take. take these parts apart. And so the amount of millionaires, and by the way, the number one ethnic group for becoming millionaires in America is Russians. They own all these junkyards because Americans

are like, I want to get rid of this. It's my trash. And other people go, hey, I'm trying to keep my car together. I need that part. And the Russians like, do Svidanya. Come on in, baby. You follow? And like, hey, all the way to the bank, all the way to the bank, making millions. Well, so good. All right. So we've covered the mindset to motivation a bit. I want to focus on methodologies because this is something you've really, really developed. Methodologies in your personal life and professional life.

Give us an overview of how you use methodologies. Sure. Well, methodologies get down to systems and routines. And again, it's very important because as an individual goes, so goes their business. There's 55 million people who either are self-employed or only. own their own business in the United States alone. And when you're sick, for a lot of small business owners, their business is a little sick. And so what are the systems?

System, if you use a little acrostic, save yourself time, energy, money. Who's developed root systems out there so you don't have to reinvent the wheel? We developed a system for generating referrals. That's what we bring to the market. There's other people who've developed systems for contact management or for computer systems or for delivery systems. You find the best, use the systems. The next thing is on a personal level,

what are your personal routines? And the only way, you know, we coach and train thousands and thousands of business owners, and the only way that we found that we can help somebody be consistent is that they have to habitualize their routines. They have to have routines that are consistent, that they do them so often, they become automatic.

You know, if someone wants to get ahead, they got to make their savings automatic. If someone wants to get ahead as an entrepreneur, they got to make their routines automatic. Here's the thing. I worked out hard this morning for an hour and a half. You know why? Because I have a trainer who comes to my home,

and I didn't feel like working out this morning. I had a long weekend. I just didn't. I mean, here I am, Mr. Motivator. This guy knocks on my door at 6 o'clock this morning. Now, I'm really glad I did it, and I'm fired up and enthusiastic for our show today. but the fact of the matter is you've got to have routines and they've got to be habitual.

The power of full engagement is a fantastic book, and that's a book I would recommend to anybody. The Power of Full Engagement, written by Jim Lair and Tony Schwartz. And basically they found that people, particularly in the athletic world, who had their routines to such a degree that they became automatic, people of similar talent would have extraordinarily different results. and so I'll guarantee you the average person listening to your show today, Ken, is going, if they truly knew they have, they know in their heart, they have more potential, they have more ability, there's more opportunity than they've taken full advantage of, and if they had a reality TV crew follow them around last week and film their entire workday, every day, there's some gaps.

There's some stuff they're doing in their day that they need to do less of, and there's some opportunities in their day to do more of the best. stuff and those little changes. A five to 10% change in a person's methodology typically produces a 50% increase in result. Wow. That's a, that's a striking piece of data there. What would you say? Talk about the people who feel like they're spinning out of control, because this is within this context of methodologies. And obviously they need to back off. But what would you say, if they were sitting down with Brian Bafini over lunch and they're like, Brian, I just, I feel like I'm overwhelmed. What would be one of the first things you'd tell

to do? Well, the first thing, again, mindset, you know, I'd find out where their heads at. Motivation, I'd find out where their goals are. And then methodologies, I'd have them show me what they're doing in their day. I was mentored by a guy, the late Dr. Alex Lackey, who was in the who's who as the most organized man in America. And he just helped me enormously as a young man. And I was just getting going to my business, had a couple of kids. And I was the guy winning all the awards and, you know, everyone else thought I was cock of the walk. Well, Alex says, I want you to write down what you do every 15 minutes in your day. And he gave me like this little egg timer.

And so every time this will go off. Now, I know I'm submitting this to my mentor. So I'm putting the best possible spin on it, okay? Sure. So I do this, and I do it for a week. When I sit down to go to lunch with him and I show him what I was doing in a week, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed.

The amount of time I was wasting in the day. and what happens is today, you know, they say the number one addiction in America by a factor of three is addiction to the phone. And we're Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and all these different things. We're checking the sports feeds all the time. And we're consciously, over 100 times a day, we're checking our phone. What are you doing with your day? The bottom line is, how much do you get out of an hour as opposed to how much hours do you spend? How much do you get out of an hour?

and when we coach somebody, we start breaking down their day, here's what we find. Most people have a lot more room. And people are going home overwhelmed. One of the things we do, when I feel overwhelmed, I check out into social media. I check out into ESPN. I check out into other things that might even be more destructive.

The fact of the matter is, what do you want? You know, what do you think? What do you believe? What goals do you have? That's the set of the sale. What are you trying to pursue? And then what systems and routines do you have on a daily basis? is to get there.

All right. We'll put you on the spot. Where are you growing right now? Well, I'm excited. I mean, an example would be being on this show with you today. You know, I've been very successful on stage with my seminars and presentations. I train 250,000 people a year, and I've developed a level of excellence in that. So, you know, we started the Brian Buffini show, and I'm starting at ground zero.

So putting myself into an environment where I need. know nothing, have no experience, have never done it before, having to learn from the grassroots up, it's very humbling and very exhilarating at the same time. And what's been exciting for us is I'm meeting people and having folks come that we've never heard from before and we're getting questions we've never been asked before. And it's been a lot of fun. But that's causing me to grow as a person by stepping out and doing something that's connected to what I've done in the past, but also very different. is fun for me to ask because as a young man, and I'm sure you still do it, but you mentioned

earlier in the conversation that you would take successful people to lunch. I'm interested to know as a new podcast host, as you're interviewing guest, as a part of what you're doing, do you find yourself learning a little bit more because you're put in that position to ask questions? I know that's true of my role, but do you see that happening? 100%. You know, you're going to interview someone who just wrote a book. You read that book in a totally different way. That's right. So I'm eating the meat and the bones, you know.

I'm applying this stuff. I'm very much into, I don't like teaching something that I haven't practiced. And so I like to have people who've been there and done that. I'm not just looking for authors and things like our speakers or people who present or have a blog. I want someone, okay, tell me what you've done. So you have that background of execution. And then it's like, okay, now you've done this. Now you've written about it.

Now tell me, and then I want to see if I can apply it to my own life before I start exposing it to the people who are listening to me. So there's an accountability with that. There's an integrity with that. And there's a challenge in that because I come up short all the time. Final question. This is kind of a fun question, but I think there's some real meat here. And I would ask you this. One of the things that you, the seven things that you mentioned earlier, you said the last one was this is immigrant mindset.

remember where you came from. Right. And we all have ancestry. We all come from somewhere. And I think it sticks out a little bit more when you talk to an Irishman and we hear the accent and everything and the immigrant story and all that. But what would you say to people listening right now about the value of knowing where you came from and your overall perspective in life? Well, I think the first thing for me and the question I ask myself and the question I ask people all the time is, what would your predecessors think of your opportunity and what would they do with it?

You know, somebody paid a heck of a price for Ken Coleman to be where he is today in Franklin, Tennessee, running the Entree Leadership podcast. Someone in your line, you know, fought through winters, fought through starvation, fought through wars, came on a ship and paid a price, and their great, great, great, great, great, great grandson is sitting there in Franklin, Tennessee today. And what would they think of what you're doing? And what would they do with the opportunity you have, Ken? And that's the same thing I'd say to every single person. You know, I married an African-American gal. You know, Miss Beverly. And she's a phenomenal woman, Olympic volleyball player. So my kids

have a DNA that came from slavery. And now they're great, they're great, they're great-grandfather was a sharecropper and his name was Solomon. So he was born in 1872 and he didn't have his last son until he was 62, which is my kid's granddad. So there's only two generations back to just after the Civil War. And I say to the kids all the time, what would Solomon think of that effort? What would Solomon, how proud of you would Solomon be of that achievement? So it's both cases. It's not just to grind you down, but to build you up. That how proud of you would they be, and then what would they do with your opportunity? That is so good.

That's the deal. And what that does is it puts me in a spirit of realizing, you know, I have a legacy. I'm part of a legacy of people I don't even know that paid a price. There's people, there's tens of millions of Irish Americans who their forebears survived a famine, got on reconditioned slave ships that were called coffin ships, where 50, you percent of the people traveling on them died to come to America. Came to America. We're discriminated against. Came to America. Struggled to survive. And now you're living in whatever part of the country you are with your Irish last name. And what would they think of your

opportunity? What would your great, great, great, grandfather, great grandmother do with your opportunity? And then how would they, how proud of you would they be? So they would be proud of you? and they'd also go, boy, if I had that opportunity, here's what I'd do with it. And I just think that's a great mindset to have. Know who you are. Know where you come from. And know whom you came from is a very powerful thing. That folks is tremendous perspective.

He is Brian Bafini. The new podcast is the Brian Bafini show. You can get it on iTunes. And what's the regular website for the podcast? They can go to Brian Bafini.com. That's as good a place as any. Good. Brian Bafini.com or the Brian Bafini Show on iTunes.

and if you love this Irishman, which I know you will, I'm telling you partaking that. It's a great, great show. Brian, you're good friend. We appreciate you being on with us. We're all better for it. You're the best, Ken. I appreciate what you're doing for entrepreneurs all over the world. Boy, I've got to tell you, folks, I love his answer at the end of that conversation,

this idea of know whom you came from. That's special stuff. Even if you're not an immigrant, you can certainly get that. You know, you think about the shoulders you stand on. Don't ever forget that. What a powerful message it was for me to think back to family members that I never had the privilege to meet. And the huge opportunities that I have that my boys and my daughter will have all because of people who went before us. That's not just a wonderful principle and encouragement for those of you who are immigrants or come from the immigrant situation. But essentially, many of us do, almost all of us do here in America.

But what a great, great thought. Who did you come from? Great, great thought. Well, Eric, the producer approached me about this recently, and I don't talk much about myself. I'm not going to start talking about myself on this podcast. This is about you, and I enjoy so much learning alongside of you when I'm doing these interviews. That's why I enjoy it so much, because I'm learning, and you get to be voyeuristic, if you will, and learn with me. But I want to share a story because from time to time, we need to remember that there's so many of you out there from different walks of life.

and if you're doing life, sometimes you get discouraged. And I was thinking about the conversation with Brian Bafini and this idea of mindset, how mindset is so powerful. You've already mentioned that. And in my mind, I think that it is a mindset that gets us through the toughest times of life because it's very easy to crawl up in a hole, cover yourself up, and just fade away. And certainly when you are faced with insurmountable odds. but I'm just going to share a brief story from my broadcasting career because I did not go to school to be a broadcaster. I was in a path towards politics, political science. And so, you know, let's say the setting for this is probably about nine years ago.

And I'm starting out from absolute scratch. I'm running my own business. I've got three little kids. And I had some freedom because I was self-employed. But I really felt the it to really try it. And I thought, well, I love sports. Let me see if I can get my toe in. in the sports broadcasting world.

Now, I'm absolutely terrified of all this. So I don't have any training. I don't know anybody. I don't come from a famous father or mother who have all these connections. I just had to really hustle. So I go to the ESPN radio fillet in Atlanta, Georgia, where I'm living at the time, and walk in one day just off the street. And I have to wait 15 minutes. I get an audience with the program director at the radio station.

These are usually the people that are making decisions about getting on air. So the guy gives me an audience. I go in. I'm looking sharp, and I'm probably, what, 30? at the time. And I look at this guy and I say, hey, here's the deal. I'll be out of your hair in 30 seconds.

He just smiled at me. And I said, I want to start interning. I make plenty of money. I'm not asking for your money. I just want to start interning. I'm 32 years old. I've got a background hosting live events. I've done this and this and this.

And I just want to learn and make some connections. No expectations. I'm not going to ask you for a job. And I'm not going to ask you for money. What can I do? He just couldn't believe. it. He said, well, you know, what's a good time a day for you? So long or short, we get to the point where I decide that I'm going to start interning as a 32-year-old, three days a week, three

hours a day of those three days for their mid-afternoon show. So start helping out. I'm getting Sprite. I'm screening calls. I'm learning how to screen calls to put them on the air. You know, coming up with sports clips, coming up with things, you know, here and there, and beginning to get to know the two midday hosts, which at the time, I'm probably making making more than both of them. But to their credit, they were kind to me, begin to build relationships. About four months into it, I finally talked them into letting me go to the SAC basketball tournament, which is here in Nashville at the time.

And I'm going to do some live call-ins. Now, they're not paying me anything, but the producer of the show pulls some strings and gets me a press pass. And so I go and I do it. We have a lot of fun, and the host enjoy it. So for three hours, for two days in a row, I'm doing live call-in reports on the ESP affiliate in the number seven market in America. So that leads to other things.

The host starts getting excited. And they say, hey, why don't you go to Falcons training camp and do some live call-ins for that? I'm like, this is great. I'm going to start being a regular contributor to a great show in Atlanta. Lots of momentum. I'm getting excited. So I have to then go to the program director to get me a press pass to the Falcons

because the producer couldn't pull the string for whatever. reason. I go in and see the same guy that four months earlier I just walked in off the street. And I said, hey, I need to get a press pass. He says, why? I tell him why. He says, I didn't know you were on the air. See, there's no idea that his own host have put me on the air in these little contributor roles. Not a lot, but some. He says, well, I can't give you a press pass. And I say, why? He says, because you're not an employee. And I said, well, Chad, the producer got me a press pass for the SEC basketball term. Well, I didn't know that. Now, as I look back, some maturity now and no pain involved with this instance. He's probably having a bad day. I'm asking

lots of questions. I want to know why. It's not going away and he just doesn't want to give me a press pass. I don't think he was out for me. I never had any problems with him. Hardly talked to him. But he looked at me and he said, Ken, you got to stop pushing me on this. I'm not going to give you a press pass. You're not going to be on the air anymore. You shouldn't have been on the air. They shouldn't have put you on the air without talking to me. He goes, you're not going to make it in a number seven market. You just need to go do something else. Now, I'm going to tell you, I'm 32 years old. And it had been in front of thousands at the Cattle Leadership of Commerce. I thought, hey, I've got some talent here.

I can do this. And I was being humble. I was doing everything that I thought I was supposed to be doing. And everything was going well. And then boom, like that, done. Now, here's the point. This is for those of you who had a door slam in your face and you've been doing everything right. This was not a situation where I had stepped on toes or maybe had an ego.

You know, there are times where we do things and there are repercussions. This was a situation where I was doing everything seeming. right and a door was laying on my face. I got to tell you, it hurt. I went home that day and began to cut the lawn immediately. That's what I do when I need to think. So I'm out cutting the grass and I'm really, really hurting. I've had a guy questioned my talent.

I've had an opportunity of momentum that was training me that could lead to something else. Gone in an instant. Why? So there's all these emotions. I took it personal at the time. then I was truly discouraged all these things. And the reality is that day cutting the grass, I went from self-pity to what's next.

And I came up the idea to launch an audio blog called One Question with Ken Coleman and take one question from all these interviews that I had the privilege to do for another leadership organization on their podcast, got their permission to use it, and just put it out for free. And it went viral. on iTunes. It then led to two years later the book that I've written called One Question. And so all that to say this, in that moment when I felt completely rejected, like all the momentum towards broadcasting that I had going was done, stopped. I had to simply make a

decision. What am I going to do? So here's the encouragement. If you've gone through that recently or you know somebody who has, you've got to turn the stop signs of life and to start It's a stop sign. It was real. It was done. It was over at that affiliate. There was nothing more going to happen. But then I started something else, which led to something way bigger, way more in line with what I wanted to do. I love sports. But if you ask me today, would you rather do sports talk or do an entree leadership interview? It's not even close. It's not even close. Turn your stop signs in the starting lines. Dead ends into detours. Here's what I realized, that that discouragement of that day, into diligence and then a transformation of my career.

And that program director looking at me and basically saying no is now one of my life's biggest yeses. Don't spend all your time trying to turn the no and turn that decision. When it's a clear no, have the maturity, the grit to accept it, turn it into a yes somewhere else. It is the detours. It is the stop signs. It is the nose that direct us to where we need to be.

That's what I found in my career. And I know that to be true for you, but you can't quit. You got to have that immigrant mindset that Brian Bafini talked about, right? He just would not quit. It wouldn't stop. It's a mindset that, A, when I see a detour, I now know, hey, that's going to lead me to where I got to go. But I got to stay on that detour to get you back on the path. Detours aren't necessarily bad things.

Are they frustrating? They can be debilitating if you quit. You've got to stay on it. I share that story because I want you to know I understand where you're at. Those of you who are feeling frustrated, those of you who are discouraged, I've been there. Here's the thought. Turn rejection into redirection. Turn rejection into redirection.

Don't quit. Now you've got to learn from it. You've got to analyze it. but allow the rejection to become the right redirection to get you on that detour to get you right back on the path. Here's what I want to do. I'd love to share more stories like this because these are the stories that we can share all the time that will encourage each other.

If you have a rejection story that you turned into redirection, I want to hear it. This is what we want to hear. We want to encourage each other on this. How have you turned a rejection into a redirection and it's worked out beautifully? What was a no has become a great yes. Podcast at entreleadership.com. Podcast at entreleadership.com would love to share these stories to encourage all of us. Well, folks, that looks like that's going to do it for this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast.

I want to thank Brian Buffini. I want to thank Nate for sending in his email and sharing a bit of his story with us. And I want to thank you the audience. On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, we appreciate you so very much. Continue to spread the word. subscribe, share, we want to build this amazing tribe. Hey, we're going to talk with you again. I promise real soon.