High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 274: How the Best of the Best View Failure, with Performance Coach, Bill Cakmis

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

If it’s on stage, at a podium, or in front of a camera, Bill Cakmis is hired to create it, develop it, enhance it, or fix it.  For over 30 years, Bill has coached singers, actors, anchors, talk show hosts, politicians, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, and athletes. His clients include Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and Emmy winners. Bill is a performance coach, talent coach, acting coach, and a motivational/keynote speaker. Bill has partnered with major film studios, production companies, TV stations and National Cable stations (CNN, FOX, The Weather Channel) to create productions that are unique, creative, and powerful. Bill’s full resume is extensive, including acting, writing, directing, and motivational speaking.  In this podcast, Bill and Cindra talk about: The key mindset strategy to help you do something no one else has done Why 90% of the game is “prep” The #1 reason we experience nerves How to not care what people think of us and why that’s essential And how the best of the best view failure You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/bill.   You can find Bill at http://cakmis.com/.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, Certified Mental Performance Consultant, Motivational Speaker, and Author. And I'm excited that you're here, ready to listen to episode 275 with Bill Kakmos. Now, if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you're in the right place. Because in this podcast, we explore everything related to mindset

to really help you reach your potential and be the best version of yourself. And today I interview Bill Kakmas. So let me tell you a little bit about Bill. You know, if it's on stage at a podium or in front of a camera. Bill Kakmas is hired to create it, develop it, enhance it, or fix it. So for over 30 years, Bill has coached singers, actors, anchors, talk show hosts, politicians, doctors, lawyers, CEOs, and athletes. And his clients include Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and Emmy winners. And I saw a list of his clients and I know you'll recognize some of the names, such as Lance Bass from NSYNC, Michael W. Smith, a Grammy Award winner, Lisa Reina

from Days of Our Lives in Melrose Place. I could keep on listing several more. Bill has also partnered with major film studios, production companies, TV stations, and cable stations like CNN, Fox, and The Weather Channel to create productions that are unique, creative, and powerful. So as you can imagine, Bill's full resume is extensive and includes acting, writing, directing, and motivational speaking. And the reason that I had Bill on this podcast is because I really wanted to explore this idea of what a performance and talent coach and acting coach really does, and the role of the mindset in these different areas of performance. In this podcast, Bill and I talk about several important mindset strategies. We talk about the key mindset strategy to help you do something no one else has done. We also talk about why 90% of your game is prep and why that's essential. He gives us the number one reason

why we experience nerves. We talk about how not to care what people think of us and why that's important that we don't care about what people think about us. And the last part we talk about is how the best of the best view failure. He talks about how the best of the best view failure. It talks about how the best of the best high performers, that they know that success is not about reaching the goal. It's about what you'll find along the way. Enjoy this podcast with Bill Kakmas. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset. I'm excited today to welcome Bill Kakmas.

Bill, how are you doing over there from Nashville, Tennessee? Nashville isset. I'm excited today to welcome Bill Kakmes. Bill, how are you doing over there from Nashville, Tennessee? Nashville is awesome. I am awesome. Thank you for having me on. You bet. So I'm looking forward to talking to you more about your work as a performance coach, a motivational speaker, a speech coach. I know you've also worked with people in broadcast news. So tell us a little bit about how you even got started into performance coaching. Oh, man, you know, that started when I was six years old. My mother started to put me on stage because I think she lived vicariously through me. She loved theater.

She loved stars. And I think she wanted me to become one. So I started acting very early on and through my teens and twenties, I was a professional actor on stage. I was classically trained. Then I went to Los Angeles to do television and film. But at the same time that I was doing all of that and I enjoyed acting and I was good at it and I made money at it. But what I really loved was working with people, helping people, coaching people, teaching. And it was never something at the time that I thought I want to be making

money at this. I want to have this as a profession. God gave everybody something. I just happened to get that thing where I walk into a room full of crap and I think, all right, there's a pony here somewhere. All I have to do is find a pony and clean that pony up and then all of that crap will just sort of disappear on its own. And I've always had that ability and affinity to do that. So even in high school and then in college, so I always taught, directed, coached. When I was in Los Angeles working, I was also acting. I was also coaching at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. I also taught at the Actors Studio and the Tracy Roberts Studio, the Globe Theater

that was there. But the Beverly Hills Playhouse, I was there for about eight years. And I did it mostly, although I get paid, but I did it mostly because I just enjoyed it and had fun directing, coaching, and teaching. So back to my mother, whom I love to death. Every time that I would do a piece of theater, every time I would do a movie, a television show, every single time I would say, Mom, I'm doing a Columbo. And my mother would say, you know what, Mom, I'm doing a Columbo. And my mother would say, you know what, you should really be doing a soap opera. And no matter what I did, she would say, you should be doing a soap opera, you would be great on a soap. So after being an actor for all of those years, finally, finally, I got on a soap. I got a contract on a soap. And I thought my mother is going to go crazy. And so after four months on the soap, I decided to fly home.

She lived in Florida. So I went to fly to Florida and just have a vacation and say hello. And when I got there, she was very excited to see me, obviously. But she didn't say anything about the soap. And I thought, well, she's just excited. So a day went by. She said nothing. The next morning at breakfast, she said nothing. And finally, I'm getting crazy now. And I said, Mom, what do you think? And she said, what do you mean? I said, I'm on a soap opera. She said, oh, sweetheart, that's nice. I said, that's nice?

I said, since I'm six years old, you've been telling me I should be on a soap. I am now on a soap. What do you think? And she said, sweetheart, I haven't been able to watch. I said, mom, I've been on it for four months. What do you mean you haven't been able to watch? And she said, honey, you come on during my stories. And it hit me suddenly that I couldn't be on any soap. I had to be on her soap because her soap opera was on the same time as mine. And she couldn't watch me because of her soap opera. And at that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks that all of these years I've been acting for my mom. And again, I love her to death. She's awesome. She is awesome. But it just hit me like, you know what? I'm good at it. I'm making money at it. But this is not my passion.

My passion is teaching and coaching and working with people. So I decided at that moment that when that soap was over, I was done. I was done acting. And I would just put all of my effort and energies into coaching. And the second I did it, it was like a floodgate. People just started to come to me. A lot of it had been because for eight years I had worked with so many high profile people through the Beverly Hills Playhouse that as soon as I said,

all right, I'm open for business as a, as a private coach. And so I just, I just started to get work immediately. And I haven't looked back. And now I work with actors and anchors and talk show hosts and politicians and religious leaders and doctors and lawyers and athletes. And if it's on stage at a podium in front of a camera, whatever that is, I am called in to either fix it or enhance it or develop it or create it. Love it. So that's as quickly as I could tell you that story. Yeah, that's great. Well, and you were on The Soap, Days of Our Lives,

which that's what I grew up watching. My mom watched it. And so, you know, like when I was growing up, we'd always have it on at 1230, you know. So I watched you. Probably, you know, the thing about being on The Soap at that30, you know, so I, I watched you. Probably, you know, the, the, the thing about being on a soap at that time, I don't know now it's been so many years, but to stay on the soap, you have to have,

you had to have so many letters coming in from fans and every letter represented something like a thousand people. So the studio would actually count letters as they came in to find out how popular you were. And if you were popular, you would remain. And so, you know, I remember walking by a room one day and seeing a lot of these elderly women in this room writing letters. And I didn't understand what was going on. And I went to talk to the guy that I did a lot of my my scenes with John Aniston who was Jennifer Jennifer Aniston's father and he had been on the soap for years and I went into John's dressing room I said John

who are all those women down the hall in that room writing letters and he said oh he said that's Dee's coven and he meant Deidre Hall he said that's her coven and I said her coven what do you mean he said well these women write letters to all of these fans so that they will write back right so because the only people because I was a bad guy on the show so the only people that wrote me were guys in prison. That was my fan base. That's great. Now that you do, you know, all this coaching with just a wide variety of people, tell us about what do you think in terms of the role of mindset? How important is mindset in terms of, you know, all these different areas in which people perform in? Well, it's, I mean, mindset is obviously very, very important. The interesting thing about it is that I found that very high profile people and people who are very successful

tend to all have the same kind of mindset. Although it's not like they're calling each other to figure out what that is. They just happen to have it. I remember when I first, first professional athlete I worked with, his name was Kenny Norton. He was the heavyweight champion of the world at the time. And he had just done a film called Mandingo. And right after this film, his management said, you know, Kenny, acting classes might not be a bad thing. So I started working with Kenny. And at the same time, he was getting ready to defend his title. And he came in one day, and he looked like somebody had just taken a bat and beaten on him. I said, Kenny, where have you been? And he said, I was just sparring because he was getting ready

to defend his title. I said, Kenny, I said, what's the hardest thing about winning? And I thought Kenny was going to say, well, you know, getting my head beaten in every day, not seeing my kids for weeks at a time. And Kenny said something, I'll never forget. He just looked at me and he said, once you win, you're not allowed to lose. And I thought, now that's pretty heady, especially coming from somebody like Kenny. And I said, well, then Kenny, why do you do it? And then Kenny did his Kenny thing. He said, Hey baby, it was what I do. I win. It's what I do. And that to me was the most telling thing because so many of these athletes, especially have done something stellar early on in their career. Then they spend the rest of their life chasing after it.

But on the other hand, it's who they are. It's what they do. They, they win and that's there is no option this is what you do in life you win and so you know i've worked with a lot of gold medalists over the years who have uh you know once they won a gold medal they wanted to become a uh a host of something or do commercials or do color commentary or whatever. And every time I worked with the gold medalists over the years, I always ask them, how did you do something no one on the planet's ever done? How do you do that? I mean, you'd never done it, but nobody's ever done it. How do you do that? And every single one of them, all these years have said basically the same thing

to me, which is I had to be able to visualize it. I had to see it. I had to have basically already done it before I'd done it. Now they'd spent, excuse me, a long time working and studying and crafting to get to a place where they can have that visualization. But the idea, the arrogance of saying or thinking, I can do something no one on the planet's ever done. There's a little bit, it takes a little bit of arrogance to be able to say that you are that good. However, every winner I've known, every successful person I've worked with had enough of that to be able to say, yeah, I deserve to be here. I am good enough to do this. And so I think that that mindset, now that mindset comes with a lot of preparation and practice and rehearsal and,

and, you know, it's a lifetime of mastery. But at the same time, I think that that's that that mindset has to exist. Does that make sense? Yes. And I think what's powerful about what you said, I wrote down a few notes and one of them was like, you know, this confidence, this belief that you can do something that no one else has done. You might think that people are born just that way, right? But I also know that you can work to develop that confidence. One question I had following up on that is I think about, so you work with these world-class people, and they maybe come into this, maybe they want to act or they want to start their own talk show or color commentate, like what you just said.

How do you see them deal with that transition, and what are things that they might struggle with that it's a new area? I think the biggest thing people struggle with across the board, no matter what they, no matter what they're doing, when I'm seeing them, they're struggling with nerves and it's fascinating because they're all at the top of the mark in what they do. But many times when they're coming to me, it's because they're having to do something they haven't done before. And, you know, I've got a little formula which goes lack of control equals fear of failure equals nerves. Okay.

So when you have a lack of control or you feel like you don't have any control, especially for a lot of these people are very high energy, A-type personalities, leaders, A characters. And so most of them are control people. They love to have control. And so when they feel like they don't have it, because of that, suddenly it creates a fear. And the fear is a fear of failure. And that fear of failure

then translates into nerves. And so that's when they're coming to me and they've got these nerves. And just this last month, I worked with a NASCAR driver. I worked with an NFL player. I worked with a Grammy winner. I worked with a CEO of a top telecommunications margin in the country. And I worked with a nationally syndicated talk shows. And with all of these people, they were, they came to me because they were having to do something they hadn't done before. And they were nervous about it.

And so, you know, my job was to help them get out of their own way so that they can do that job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give us a little insight in,

in terms of like, how do you do that? How do you help people get out of the way? Well, the interesting thing about this idea of failure is that if you look at it as being a debilitating loss, and some people look at failure as that. If I fail, that means I've lost and it's debilitating. Interestingly enough, all of these people to do what they have done to become high profile professionals in their profession, they didn't think about failure as a debilitating loss, but only as an opportunity. They all fell and just got right back up again uh i'm working with this i'm working with uh an nfl player right now last last year i went and saw a one of their practices and you know

the i think you know this the practices are crazy right yeah in a session i'm sitting down with this guy in a session and i said man before we got started i said man you gotta hate practice he said no I love now this guy's been playing ball for 28 years right and he's he's crazy good at what he does and I said you gotta hate practice he said no man I love practice I said come on he said no I do I said why he said because it's the only time I can fall on my butt and I said why I said why is that important he said it's because falling on your butt is the only time you learn anything. He said, when I'm playing a game, I got to stay in my lane, man, because I got mouths to feed. He said, so, and now his lane is pretty big because he's been doing it for years.

But still, you know, when he's playing, he's very careful, as good as he is, because, you know, he doesn't, he's got mouths to feed, and he doesn't want to screw around. So he said, practice is the only time i can really go to failure so that teaches me what i can do and what i can't do so he doesn't look at you know at that word of any kind of fall as a loss but only as a learning experience yeah and so with all of these folks, when they're coming to me, especially they're doing things that they're not used to doing, one of the things that I've got to work with them on, and I work with a lot of people that are just in their normal daily lives who have a concern about

a first time, especially public speakers, a lot of public speakers who, again, have this fear which causes these nerves. And the idea of the biggest fears that we have in life are usually connected to things that are happening with us that we have no control over, a first date, an interview, public speaking. And it's all because during those times we're worried about other people liking us yeah am I good enough am i am i smart enough am i pretty enough will they like me will they like me and this thing about will they like me you have no control over whether somebody likes you or not over a period of time you might be able to get them to, but in a

situation where something is just there the first time and you've got to get it done, worrying about someone liking you or worrying about will they like you, it puts you in a place of no control. You have no control over that. And because you have no control, that's what causes the primal fear of failure, which then turns into nerves. So in all of those cases, with all of these folks, what I do is get them to focus on the goal, not on the problem. I'm trying to get them to focus on someone else, not themselves. If it's the public speaker, if it's the first date, if it's the interview, I'm trying to get them or I want to get them or I work with them to forget about who they are, forget about they've done all the prep they can before they walked into the situation.

Once you're there, there's no more prep to be done. Once you're there, there's no more learning to be had. All you can do in that moment in time is put all of your focus on that other person and make it about them. And it's not about you. It's about them. And if you can do that, a lot of that fear goes away. A lot of it dissipates. Right. And I'm thinking about the people that you're working with and even ways that I can feel really nervous.

You know, a few years ago, I was asked to dance hip hop. Have you seen like Dancing with the Stars on TV? Of course, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And I was asked to do this in my hometown to raise money for the American Red Cross. I don't, Bill, I don't, I don't dance. At one point, my husband told me that I would like dance like Eileen from Seinfeld. You know, like. Right, right, right. Yeah, I don't dance. My husband told me that I would like dance like Eileen from Seinfeld, you know, like,

right, right, right. I don't dance. But that's also what I was thinking a lot about is like, I don't dance. And when I have danced, you know, people have laughed at me, right. And and I had so much anxiety because it was something I'd never done before. And I thought about freezing on stage. And, you know, so I really had to get over that while I was dancing. And I'm thinking of all the people that you work with and it's like TV reporters and if they're going to like me or if I'm going to make a mistake or mess up, you know, or, or acting as well. So tell me a little bit more about when you said like, put the focus on them over you do you mean them in the audience do you mean them like let's say if you're a talk show host and you're interviewing

someone like tell us a little bit more about that sure you know for anchors and reporters and weathercasters one of the things certainly in all of these positions, they need to know their jobs really well. Prep, as I'm sure you know, is everything. It's, you know, 90% of the game is prep. Because once you're on the field, once you're doing the gig, you can't be thinking about technique. You know, there are two parts to any craftsman, whether it's acting or being a politician or being a doctor, whatever it is, there are two parts. There is talent and there's technique. Talent's a God-given thing. You can't buy it. You can't create it. Nobody can give you talent. You either have it or you don't.

Some people have a lot. Some people have a little, but I can't tell you the number of times over the years that parents have come to me and asked me to give their kids talent. And I can't do that. Now, what they don't have, what you're not born with is technique. Technique is something you build along the way. And the more technique you have, the more it supports your talent. And the reason athletes, professional athletes, 80, I think it's 87%, 87% of an athlete's career is practice. The game's nothing to them. Because when they get on the field or in the ring or whatever, they can't be worried about technique. It's, they have to be able to just all of the technique. And certainly when I'm working with people, one of the things I do is try to assess where they're at in terms of their technique for the job that they're trying to do. And any holes that are missing or that need to be shored up, we make sure that we work on the technical issues to get them up to snuff. But then once they're on the field or once they're doing their job, like I said, a newscaster, a reporter, then we talk about, all right, who are you talking to? Who is your viewer?

Forget about you now know how to do your jobs. Forget about that. Who is your viewer? And for most local news stations, the viewer is a 42-year-old woman with two kids. It's Martha who has two kids. One is in elementary school and one is in junior high. And once we start talking about who this woman is and what she cares about and why she's watching the local news, the more they know about her, when they're deciding how they're going to relate that story, it's got to be based on

why would she care? Not if she would like them, because it doesn't matter if Martha likes them. All that matters is that Martha listens to them and that Martha gets what she needs to protect her family. So it's the same thing if you go to a doctor and your doctor talks to you about doctor's family and talks to you about a tennis game that doctor just had and things that are going on in that doctor's life. You don't care about any of that. All you care about is, look, I came here for me, not for you. Fix me. You know, if the doctor is pleasant as well and if they have a sense of humor, that's great. But you didn't go there to be entertained. You went there to be healed. So when I'm working with doctors, and I once had to

go to the Cleveland Clinic because those surgeons who are fantastic at what they do, they were getting into trouble because they weren't being nice to the patient's grandmother. They were treating them well because they just wanted to go in, do their surgery and leave. They didn't want to have those conversations. So to teach these folks that it's not about you, man, at that point, it's got to be about the person you're talking to. I just, you know, one of these, as I said earlier this month, I worked with a NASCAR driver who now wanted to do color commentary for races. So, again, he was so concerned. How do I look?

How do I sound? And I said, look, you're behind a microphone. No one's really watching you. They're watching the race. So don't worry about how you look. And we can work about your sound uh in as you practice but when you get on there you got to be thinking about the people you're talking to what do they care about if you were talking to a great friend at a bar and he was asking you questions about the race

how would you talk to him what would you say and really that's a key issue in so many of these things is being able to take the the onus off of who you are as an individual. Once you've learned everything you need to know and focus it on the people you're communicating to. Yeah, that's powerful, Bill. I'm thinking about speaking, right? And I do a lot of keynote speaking and public speaking. And if you're thinking about yourself or what they think about you, you know, you can't connect with them. But if you're thinking about, oh, well, you know, these teachers are in the audience, or these doctors are in the audience, or that's who I want to connect with, you're really thinking about the

audience, and you do have a better connection. So yeah, and you know, that's that thing that they tell you sometimes, if you're ever nervous, think about the audience in their underwear. Well, the only reason that works, if it does work, is because it puts your focus on them. You're taking your focus off of yourself, and you're putting your focus on those people that are in the audience. So that's really why that saying exists. So, you know, when you do those speeches, or people who are nervous about doing speeches, you know, I always tell them to see, you know, to see if they can get there a little ahead of time, meet the people they're going to be talking to, get to know some people so that when you get up and you start to talk, you've already got friendly faces in the

audience that you can look at and that you could talk to and you can relate to. The more you know and understand the people that you're performing for, the less nervous people get. Yeah, that's good. Bill, when you think about like your work as a performance coach with singers, I remember seeing this picture with you and Lance Bass, right, from NSYNC. But tell us about, you know, some of the singers that you work with, Grammy winners, tell us how you might work with them. Well, for most singers, when they come to me, I don't need to teach them how to sing because at that point, they know how to sing. They know how to do their job.

And I don't need to teach them really about the music because most often they've either written it or they've performed it many times. Many times they're coming to me because they don't know how to deal with the audience in the interim between songs, or sometimes it's how to interpret a song or music that isn't theirs to begin with. And some of these performances too, it's how to deal with the public, whether it's being in interviews or being in social situations or seeing folks before or after a performance. So really, I'm mostly dealing with a lot of these performers on, listen, I've got a new show. I'm working with some new folks on stage. Take a look at this and

make sure we want to see, make it, make sure it runs as smoothly as possible what i try to do is keep performers away from saying things like how you doing new york how you doing nashville how you doing chicago you know it's it's like that's just it's forcing an audience to applaud it doesn't help you you know if the audience feels like you the audience feels like they're being asked to applaud for you, it doesn't help you. So it's working with them on how to do these interstitials between their songs, what to say, how to say it, how to connect with the audience. And, you know, every performer is different. So I look at who they are as individuals, who they are as songwriters and performers.

And, you know, one thing I'll say to a lot of them is a lot of performers that are fairly new, they perform as if they were songwriters, not as if they were stars. In other words, they will perform the song, or they'll play the song, they will they'll play the song they won't play the audience and stars will play the audience because the song is the song and if it's just about the song just hand everybody a cd and go home but people came there to see you and to

connect with you and to have some communal event with you it It's about the music as well. So I'm not saying music isn't important. It's very important. But it's like with a lot of actors, you know, I will tell them that, you know, Shakespeare is fantastic. But I've seen a lot of bad actors do Shakespeare. It ain't Shakespeare anymore. So no matter how good the content is, you've got to be able to deliver. And a lot of that delivery has to do with how you connect with your audience. Awesome. Awesome. For sure. I hear what you're saying. I'm thinking about times where I've seen maybe speakers perform and then there was no connection or musicians that just played the song but didn't connect. So Bill, what would some of

your top tips be in terms of connecting with the audience and how you might do that as an entertainer? Well, I think that you have to put yourself in their place and decide why do they. The interesting thing about branding is that great branding is usually not about the product. Great branding is about the consumer, right? Yeah. So in other words, Burger King doesn't tell you how they make hamburgers because you already know how a hamburger is made. So they don't waste time on that.

What they do is they tell you, if you come to our place, you can have it your way. And Disney doesn't tell you about all of their rides. It's a theme park. And so everybody knows what a theme park is and a ride is a ride. But Disney says, look, if you come to our theme park, your dreams will come true. And, you know, Nike says they don't tell you about sneakers and shorts. They say you can do anything if you wear our stuff just so whenever you're branding whether it's real product or whether it is your singing whatever it is you have to first figure out what does your audience

need what does the consumer need that from your product what do they get from it because that's where i have to give them is in terms of my connection with them. I have to make sure that they get that. With a lot of country stars, with a lot of country singers, it's not just about the music. It's a real, you know, most country fans need that connection with a performer. And if they have that connection, if they really love that performer, you know, some of the songs might not be as good as others, but man, they will consume anything that performer does because they love that performer. And so to understand that people really, because they've heard everything. There isn't anything anyone hasn't heard now.

You know, you get numb to all of the information that we get. So what really drives us and the things that we have affinity for are the things that hit us either emotionally or spiritually or visually, but not academically. So we need to make sure that when we're communicating with people, if we're speaking, if we're communicating with them, that we're using words that hit our audience visually or emotionally or viscerally. If we're performing, you know, music and we understand our audience, you know, you have to read the room. I

mean, there's some audiences are different than others. Some cities are different than others. So you have to kind of know what you're walking into and you want to make sure that you're making that kind of a connection. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. Super great. Bill, one question that I always ask everybody. So I'd like your answer to this. And I think about your bio, you know, for 30 years, motivational speaker, acting, writing, directing, performance coach. You have so much experience. And so I think people might think, well, you know, Bill's got it all figured out. But I'd like for you to tell us about a time where, you know, that you failed and what you learned from it.

Just to help us gain perspective, but also realize you're human too. Everybody is, right? You know, I don't know if you're going to like this answer or not, but it's the only answer I have. I've never, I've certainly done things that I haven't been good at, or I've realized that, you know, this isn't the way to go, or I've certainly had goals that I didn't obtain. But I've never considered failure as a loss, you know, or I've never considered that word as a debilitating loss. I've just always considered it an opportunity. In other words, I, I, you know, I would, I will go as far as I can with something and realize, you know what, I'm not good at this. So it's not that I failed at it. I just learned something. I, you know what, I love the story about Thomas Edison. I don't know if you know the story where he, it took him 98, I think it was 98 times, 97, 98 times to create a light bulb. They tried 98 times and

each time it didn't work. And when they finally did it, instead of the journalist asking him, so what does it feel like to create the light bulb? This journalist did what most journalists do and said, how did it feel to fail 97 times? Yeah. And Edison said, what are you talking about? He said, well, you failed 97 times at making a light bulb. And Edison said, what are you talking about? He said, well, you failed 97 times at making a light bulb. And Edison said, no, I didn't. He said, I learned, I learned 97 ways not to make a light bulb, but I didn't fail because we've got a light bulb. So, you know, I just, a couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine asked me to speak to his daughter because she wanted to be an actor. She wants to be an actor.

And she's 22 and she hasn't left home. And he doesn't understand it, but he's her father and he's, you know, parents. It's hard for kids and parents to talk to each other about those kinds of things. So I said, yeah, fine. I sit down with her. So I sat down with her. I said, so what's going on? And she says, well, I want to be an actor.

I said, okay. And she lives in Dallas. And I said, okay. I said, so what's the problem? She says, well, and she goes to acting classes and she's done a couple of little parts and things, and she's talented. And I said, what's the problem? And why don't you go leave Dallas and go to wherever you need to go to become an actor which would be either Los Angeles or New York or Atlanta someplace that has a lot of a lot of that stuff going on and she said what if it doesn't work out yeah what if I what if I fail and it was a little heartbreaking only because she's the daughter of a very good friend of mine.

But it's something that I have heard over and over and over again all these years, is that what if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? And so many people don't create goals because they're afraid as soon as they create it, what if they fail? What if they don't reach the goal? And what I've learned all of these years is that every high profile professional that I've ever worked with, every successful person, and I ask them all when I work with them, I say, I always ask them, is this what you wanted to do when you started out? Yeah. And nobody has ever said to me in 30 years, yes, this is what I wanted to do.

Nobody. It was always, no, I actually wanted to do that. Or actually, I was on that path. And so, and then I've asked, well, so did you fail? And they went, are you kidding? Look where I'm at. And so what I've learned and what I told her is creating goals, it's not about succeeding at that goal. The success is not about reaching that goal. The success is about creating a goal to put you on a

path. Because once you're on that path, other things will come to you, will present themselves to you that many times will be better opportunities than the goal that you were going for. And because you were on that path, you will find other things that are potentially better. Now, if they're not better, if you don't want them, you'll still stay on that path and you'll still go for that goal. But the idea is, is that if you never have the goal, you never get on the path. And if you never get on the path, you do nothing in your life. Yeah. And so what I was telling her is, is that, look, you've got to go, you've got to create a

goal and get on the path. Mastery, I had a sensei that used to say to me that, well, one thing he always used to like to say is that there is no failure. There's only embarrassment. I like that. Right? But what he really did teach me is that mastery is a journey. It's not a destination.

There is no nirvana. You know, there is no place where you finally get there and you go, okay, I'm done. It just doesn't exist. You know, there's always something new. You know, when we were in high school, it was always about getting to college. When we're in college, it's about getting that first job. When we get that first job, it's about getting that second job. And it just continues. So, you know, there have been shows that I've done that were not good. There have been things that I've attempted in my life that I realized, you know, I'm just not good at that. I'm not a good gambler. I'd like to be. But if I go to Vegas, I leave empty handed. Right. Because I'm just not a great gambler, but it's not, that's not a failure.

I just learned how, you know, there's something that I'm just not good at and to put my energies into other things. I appreciate that answer because I think that's really important. Even when you started the interview, we were talking about, you know, these world-class athletes and the NFL athlete you were talking about at practice. And one thing you said is what separates the, the lead is really that they don't see failure as a debilitating loss. Right. And so I appreciate that you answered that way because I think it's consistent, but also what you said about that success is not actually about reaching that

goal. It's more about what you find about yourself or about what you want or your passion along the way. It's about being, it's success is being on a path. I mean, that's, that's, if you're on a path towards a goal, whether you reach that goal or not, that's not the point. The point is, is being on the path and moving forward. And, you know, success is not about falling down because we all fall. Everybody falls. It's not about that. It's about getting up. That success is all about recovery. It's not about the fall. Everybody's always worried about the fall. And because they're

worried about the fall, they never try. And the point is, is you're going to fall. We all fall. So stop worrying about it because guess what? It's going to happen. The point is that, you know, the success is getting up and either try again or realize, you know what? I just learned something about myself. This isn't for me. But what I did also learn in being on this little path is this other thing over here is interesting to me. And then I'm going to try that. I remember I was in Los Angeles. I lived in L.A. for 15 years.

And I wanted to learn how to inline skate. You know, there's inline skates. And so I go out and we're on concrete in Malibu. Excuse me, in Venice, on Venice Beach. And I'm on these skates, and I've got a professional instructor there, and he's going to teach me how to inline skate. So I'm standing there on these skates, and I got tons of padding on. I've got pads on my knees.

I've got pads on my arms. I've got pads everywhere. And the guy says, well, it looks like you're afraid to fall. And I said, I am afraid to fall. He said, good. He said, the first thing we're going to do before we move on is you're going to fall. That's awesome. He said, I need you to fall.

I said, I'm not understanding you. He said, fall on your knees. I said, but I don't want to fall on my knees. He said, look, we can't go any further with this lesson unless you fall. So it's up to you. We can stop right here or fall on your knees and then we can go on from here. Now he was one of the best skaters in that arena around. And I thought, I can't, I can't leave this and tell people that I, you know, that I left. And so I went, all right.

So I fell on my knees. And because I had those pads on my knees, nothing happened. I didn't feel it. And I went, hey. And he looked at me and he said, are we good? I said, yeah. He said, so, so what did falling do? I said, it didn't do anything.

He said, great. All right, now let's skate. I love it. Great story. Great story. Right? Once the realization that falling didn't really matter, it was going to be fine, suddenly I learned how to skate and half the time it would have taken me otherwise had I been nervous

about falling. Yeah. And maybe the whole time kind of tensed up or held yourself back because you're so worried about falling. Exactly. Love it. So Bill, I know you have a book coming out next month, the anchor reporter and weathercaster walk into a bar. Tell us about that and the other books that you have. The yeah, the book that's coming out is yes.

An anchor reporter and a weathercaster walk into a bar. I've in, in all of these years, I've spent a lot of time working in local television create a loyalty amongst their listeners and to be compelling better communicator and wants to be more compelling and wants to create a loyalty with their listeners, with their staff, with their customers, whatever. So that, that book's coming out next month. I also, the last book I wrote was called Coffee with Cacmus. And those are just inspirational thoughts that you can read every day to get you in the mood or to have you to have a great attitude for the day. And then the book before that was, it's not what you say, which is just communication concepts for all of the different fields that I've worked in. And you can get all of those on Amazon.

And I sound like a commercial now. Sorry. That's great. I asked you that question. And I know you can learn more about his performance coaching at CACMIS.com. Would you just, is there any other ways that we can reach out to you, Bill? Gosh, CACMIS.com is it. Everything that you would need is there, whether it's my speaker's agent is, you can get that information from that website as well. So, Cinder, you know, I really appreciate your podcast. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for this.

You're welcome. And thank you so much for your wisdom today, Bill. Here's some things that I got from the interview and people always like when I summarize it at the end, because I think it's good where, you know, people are listening and maybe listening on the go or listening while they work out. Right. So it's nice to have a little bit of a summary, but at the beginning about how the most elite don't see failure as a debilitating loss, that they really kind of, you know, fall. Like your inline skating story, they fall and then just get back up. I also appreciated when you're talking about nerves and people who are so nervous that, you know, that we

can get in our own head about people liking us, but instead really focusing on the audience and what do they care about? How can we make a connection with them and play to the audiences that are just kind of play the song or, you know, play to us. So I really appreciated that. And then at the end, you talked about how success is not actually about reaching the goal, but it's more about a path and finding the things that are most interesting to you and that you're passionate about. So, Bill, thank you so much for your time and your energy today. I do appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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