High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 591: Living the High Performance L.I.F.E. with Scott Danner, CEO, Entrepreneur, and Podcast Host

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Scott Danner is a champion of high performers — and those who strive to be the best version of themselves.  A CEO, entrepreneur, coach, consultant and LIFE Optimization specialist, he is the author of the Amazon best-selling book Freedom Street. He hosts the podcast The High Performance LIFE for high performers in any profession.  Although a high income is often the by-product of success, Scott encourages high performers to focus first on LIFE (an acronym representing love, impact, faith and energy), and the money will follow.  2016, Scott launched his own business in Chesapeake, Va., that has grown to more than 70 professionals in seven states. His business has grown more than 2,000 percent in less than six years and continues to expand nationally.    In this podcast, Scott and Cindra talk about: This LIFE Model – Love, Impact, Faith, and Energy – and why it is important for us 3 traits of the world’s best  How we can live a RICH life  Strategies for scaling your business  The difference between living a legacy and leaving a legacy    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/591 FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON X: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong LEARN MORE ABOUT SCOTT: www.scottdanner.com  Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindhra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here for episode 591 with Scott Danner. I'm grateful that you're here. You know, as the founder of the Mentally Strong Institute, we help purpose-driven leaders and athletes play big and achieve their most audacious goals. So to start 2024 with a bang, we're going to invite you to sign up for a free coaching call with one of my team members at freementalbreakthroughcall.com. It's free, no strings attached. We want to help you continue to think and act like a high performer. So if you want to achieve your goals quicker, level up your confidence, and increase your influence,

you can head over to freementalbreakthroughcall.com to apply for your free call. We look forward to talking to you. Now in today's episode, I interview Scott Danner and he's a champion of high performers, those who are really striving to be the best version of themselves. He's a CEO, an entrepreneur, a coach, and the author of an Amazon best-selling book, Freedom Street. He is perfect to have on this podcast for many reasons. He hosts the podcast called The High Performance Life, so he's passionate about high performance.

He's also perfect for this podcast because he has scaled his own business. In 2016, he launched his own business in Virginia that has grown to more than 70 professionals in seven states. His business has grown more than 2,000% in less than six years. And today in the episode, we talk about his advice for scaling a business. You know, he believes that although high income is often the byproduct of success, he encourages high performers to focus first on life, an acronym representing love, impact, faith, and energy, and the money follows.

And in this episode, we talk about his life model and why it's important for us, three traits of the world's best, how we can live a rich life, strategies for scaling your business, and the difference between living a legacy and leaving a legacy. To see the full show notes and description of

this podcast, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 591. And if you want to sign up for that free call, you can head over to freementalbreakthroughcall.com. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Scott. Scott Danner, thank you so much for being here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. How's your day going? I am excited to be here and the day has just started, but it's starting with you, so it's going to be a great day. It's going to be a great day because we're starting with some fun energy today. And I'm just so excited that you're here today on the podcast. Today, we're going to talk about how you've built a successful financial planning firm, but also your book, Freedom Street and Your Life Model. So maybe just to get us started,

tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about right now. You know, I think what I'm most passionate about is right where I'm at, right at this moment. So I'm constantly talking to people and I'm saying, you are right where you're supposed to be. And yes, a part of where I am today has been the successful business that we've run for 21 years. And I'm very, very happy to have such an amazing team, such an amazing staff,

so many great people to learn leadership with and on and, you know, your own family, right? And I have the High Performance Life podcast, which has been absolutely cool, which is how we got connected because we started talking high performance and we had dinner with a bunch of people and it was such a cool connectivity.

But what I'm passionate about right now is just starting the year off right, building the life that I wanna lead. I really believe in living a legacy, not just leaving a legacy. And so when I start to do my plan and my life model, I start to plan out my, I spent all day yesterday laying out the most important things in my life and how I was going to build the life around them. Not let life come at me and just see what happens,

but actually build an intentional plan around what are the things that I wanna do. So I love teaching people this. I love helping people with that. And I think that's been something that's really, really been on my mind a lot lately. Well, I think it's perfect that we're talking at the beginning of the year.

And I know a lot of people are using this as just a time to reset and really think about what they want. And I love what you just said about living a legacy, not just leaving a legacy. Tell us about what that means to you and maybe a little bit more about your process that you just went through of being really intentional about how you want to show up this year and what you want to do. Yeah. So the high performance life is an acronym for life, love, impact, faith, and energy. So love is the who's in your life that matter most, who you surround yourself with.

Your impact is what you do every day. Now, this can start with your career, but if it ends with your career, it's not an impact at all. It's got to go beyond that. So it's your impact on the world. It's your to go beyond that. So it's your impact on the world. It's your habits of daily impact, which we can talk about later. Faith is something bigger than yourself. For me, that's God. And it's the centerpiece of my life. It's my why. So it's who, what, why. And it's got to be something bigger than ourselves. A lot of emptiness is something a lot of high performers feel because they're chasing the

wrong God. They're chasing the wrong thing. They're chasing the ego. They're chasing ego cash, ego money, ego everything. And in the world of branding and worrying about these things, it's really dangerous. And so we've got to have a strong foundation. And then last but not least is something that I know you believe a lot in, and that is energy. And E is energy. It's how you show

up in the world. So it's your healthy mind, your healthy body, your healthy spirit. It's your health. This is the quadrant of life that is really important. If you notice in my, excuse me, in my four quadrants and my life model, I have, I have faith and, and energy on the bottom because we can't be who we want to be to the who's in our life that matter. If we're not grounded, if we're not the best version of ourselves, we can't make an impact on the world. If we're not grounded, if we're not the best version of ourselves. We can't make an impact on the world if we're not grounded, if we're not the best version of ourselves. And so the question was great because there's a second part to this is I defined it. The second part is this. How do I use it? The first thing I do is yesterday I spent and I do this multiple times in a year, but yesterday I spent most of the morning just brain dumping in each of those categories.

So take love. The first thing I'd start with is love. Who were the people that matter most to me in my life? Why do they matter? What are the things? I go through each of the questions. What do they matter? What are the things I want to do with them?

Why do they matter? Why is this person more important? I start to actually explore friendships. I obviously start with my wife and my children and my parents. Then I write down everything I want to do with them this year. You know, something as simple as my mom is amazing and she does so many things in a day, but she's always so busy that there's things that I know she wants to do in the home that she doesn't prioritize. And I wrote some of those things down that I want to help her organize. I want to help her create the next chapter of the house that really should have

probably been done a decade ago. But at this point in time, I want to help her do that little things that matter to me for the year. Okay. Or for the moment. And then I go through each category, brain dumping, impact. I start, yes, I start with work. What are the goals that I have? What are the objectives? Then I go to the podcast, which I consider hobby or fun because I love it so much, you know? And then I put in guests that I want to see and why that would impact people and how it would impact me. And I write key words in there. I mean, I just brain dump on everything. My son walked in, he's 14. And he said yesterday, he goes, dad, it just looks like a mess. And I said, it is, it's my brain and my brain's a mess. But when I'm organizing my brain,

I'm actually laying out the things that matter most. And so what I will do over the next week is I'll start to circle and prioritize in each of those categories the things that are action items, the things that I can control and the things I can't control. What part of it can I control? And I start to develop a plan for the year. I also bought Jesse Itzler. I think it is big ass calendar. And and I laid out the calendar for the year of all, you know, it's really difficult. My sons, uh, play a lot of competitive soccer. Uh, one's, uh, going to start college next year. He's just committed to play division one soccer. The other one is playing for an academy. Their travel schedule is the reason that I have to build this model. Like I can't be a part of their lives if I don't build

out my life as a part of it. And if they're my priority, then I have to start with where are we going to be? How do I show up for them? And how do my wife and I manage it together? And so this is, that's a long answer, but it's a way my life model is about establishing the who, the what, the why, and the how, and then evaluating from there what matters most and why and how I'm going to execute. And so that's where, and it's not just a one-day process. It's really something I do. Sometimes I do it anytime I'm overwhelmed. If I find myself completely overwhelmed, like there's too much on my plate, I dial it back and I brain dump and I start this process all over again.

Well, I love it, Scott. I think what's great about that is that you're really thinking about and planning intentionally what you want to do. And so many times we have these ideas, we don't write them down on paper, and then we lose them. And I could imagine just doing that yesterday really will help you throughout the year. I also really liked in your book, Freedom Street, where you're talking about your life model. And then, well, I guess this is slightly different, but I was thinking about the quadrants

that you had in your book, right? And those are still the quadrants. They're still the quadrants. We just call it something cool now, the life model, because it wasn't cool enough when we wrote the four quadrants. We just call it something cool now, the life model, because it wasn't cool enough when we wrote the four quadrants. Perfect. And so do you encourage people to, you know, have the who, what, why, how, and then again,

the love, impact, faith, and energy in the four quadrants? And I'm just trying to think about how people could actually use this maybe after our podcast sit down and do it just like Scott might do it. Yeah. So the first thing I do is I write life at the top of a, I love those big working calendars. Okay. The ones that are like desk, full desk calendars, the old school ones that have the big blocks in them. And I rip off an old month or a new month, whatever. And I use the back of that. So it's a huge piece of paper on my desk. It takes up, you know, half to three quarters of the desk. And I draw a T straight across the page. And, you know, every time I do it, I adapt it to my

own version. So yesterday I drew a T and I did love in one corner, impact, faith, and energy. And then I laid out the model. I also drew another line in the middle where they all intersect. And then I wrote, because I've really dived deep into my faith and deeper each year, you know, the older we get, the more we realize how blessed we are. And I actually put God in the centerpiece. And then I connected certain areas of the entire model to each other where they connected. So I drew lines of connection points between love and faith. You know, I drew, my son's going to college next year. I want him to not fail as hard as I did with separating from the very grounding and foundation that's given me all of the blessings and life goals that I've laid out and success.

And yet you have to separate to, to pull it all back. And I want to build a foundation that helps him be stronger. I can't make him of course, but I can at least guide him as a father. Right. And so I connected some of the dots of the who's and the what's, but if I'm sitting at home and I want to do this, start with life, write life up on the top, draw a T across the page. Think of all the who's all the what's all the wise and all the how's. And then just ask yourself each of those questions in each box. If you're in the who box, you want to ask yourself, what do these people mean to me? You want to say, why are they important?

And how am I going to show up in their lives? Now, keep in mind, I'm focused on me and how I show up for them, not how they need to show up for me. A lot of times when we think love, we think of, you know, how people love me. It's not about how people love me. It's how I love them. So it's about what I can control. This entire page is about only the things that I can control. And it's so powerful because it builds habits. It develops a victor mentality, not a victim mentality. And it shows you how to guide your life in the most challenging moments, or it can allow you just to be able to focus on the things that are most important. And remember,

I mean, I write names down sometimes. I go through my phone when I'm going through the who's. Who have I texted recently that I'm forgetting? Who do I want to invest more time in? Why are they important? Which category of life do they fall into? Is it impact? Is it faith? Is it energy? Is there a personal trainer that's helping to change my life? Is there a spiritual leader that's really guiding me or a friend that's journeying on a spiritual journey with me that I want to invest more in? These are the things that I do. And you're using the simple questions of who, what, why, and how to figure out and lay out your life. Well, I think that's so powerful, Scott, because I think most people don't take time to think about how they want to live and what they want to do. And they don't take time to really think about who's important to them. So I could just imagine that reflective process yesterday was really powerful. Hi, this is Cinder Campoff, and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing?

If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker, visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. Let's talk a little bit about your podcast. And you have the high-performance life in there. So you've included love, impact, faith, and energy.

I'm curious about what are some lessons you've learned just from interviewing other people? And you've had some incredible guests on last year, just to kind of get us started. So what are, you know, two or three ideas or concepts that you've really learned from interviewing other people? So one of the things I think I struggle with early on because I'm so results oriented and I also grew up with a little bit of a scarcity mindset as I was growing up and out of that life that I struggled being mentored. I was always really good at being a leader and being a mentor and being a coach, but I often had the mentality

that I can figure it out. And that's the entrepreneur brain. That's my results oriented brain. But what I love about the podcast is I'm mentored every single time we have a conversation. So the most, I mean, it's so cool. Like you're gaining stuff that you will use for the rest of your life in, in every conversation. And, um, and so I I'd like to take this question in a couple of different ways. Number one is how powerful that's been for me. It's, it's been so awesome to be mentored and to remember how many people you in just a conversation for an hour, you can gain so much wisdom. Who are you not talking to? Who are you not asking questions of? Who's doing the things in your life, your career, your space, your relationships that you want to

be like and why? And are you asking those questions? Number two is you really start to see the people as you interview people, you start to see the people that come in with a transaction mentality and a relationship mentality. So some people come in and the only thing they're going to talk about is their book. The only thing they're going to talk about is the playbook that they've written. We'll use a sports analogy. I know you appreciate this. They're robots. They're going to run the same play every time, regardless of the defense they're facing.

And I don't like that. I don't like it. So my life model, where this came from is in the financial planning space of my career, I realized really quick that you didn't want to work with someone like me unless I tapped into your life. And everybody was transaction-based. Everyone, even people that were teaching us, it was, here's what you need to do. Here's how much your goals are. Here's what everything was wealth based. So I created life wealth optimization and the life model was the first component of

all that. Well, when I do an interview, I try to go for the life. I want to know about your family. I want to know about your life. I want to know about what you, what you think is important. I want to understand life because I feel like high performers get caught up in the goals and the results, and they're not actually in the transactions of each thing. And then they feel empty all the time. I've done it. I've felt

it. And so I'm focusing on the things that matter most. So I've really learned quickly whether or not I'm going to be a robot in the interview, or if I'm going to be, um, a relationship person and you know, the relationship people, because after the interview, they're the people that are sending you a quick text saying, I love that. That was so great. Thank you so much. Or you're sending them something that's special and saying, hey, I did one the other day and we talked Ted Lasso. And I love Ted Lasso. I do too. I love Ted Lasso.

And you can see my Believe poster. I know. I love that. I'm like, where can I get one? No, that was a gift from my assistant, from my executive admin, who she's way more than an assistant, by the way, but she listens to every show and she's absolutely amazing. And she's like, you need a Believe picture like somewhere, cause you love Lasso. Anyway, we connected on the show and I bought

two t-shirts, Believe t-shirts that were Ted Lasso shirts. And I sent him one and I, and I wore one and we agreed to do another podcast where we just talk about the psychological impact and breaking down the psychology of the show. He's a doctor of psychology and a super big thinker. And so instead of ending it there, I build it way past. It's a building block and a start to future conversations. The last thing I'll say about the podcast is that that's huge. Again, if I'm going to be mentored, I need to open up and listen. Right. The last thing I will say is I am shocked at the impact it's had on people that I didn't know were listening. I mean, I got texted over the holidays by a friend of mine, and I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but it's somebody that I'm an acquaintance with. We've become friends over the years.

They're actually in Genius Network, a group that you and I are where we met. And they listened to a lot of my stuff. And the text was really powerful to me because it reminds me of things that I know that I'm not always doing. So just because I say it on the show, just because I believe it in the back here

doesn't mean I always practice it. And so when somebody tells me something and they remind me of my own words, there's nothing more powerful than that. So I often go back and I think through the lesson that the listener is providing me. And I'm not only being mentored by my guests, I'm being mentored by the listeners. And then I'm just really, really honored that people are listening and it's making an impact. And it's men, it's women, it's teenagers. You know, I'm shocked at the people that are listening.

Well, that's awesome. So again, High Performance Life, I'm going to encourage everybody to check it out. And you know what's cool about that answer is a couple of things. I was thinking about, a lot of people ask me like, Cyndra, why are you still doing this podcast? Because, you know, I started it in 2015. You're an OG. You're an OG. Oh, super OG. And I was just actually thinking yesterday when I was preparing for this interview, I'm like, man, we got to do something to celebrate 10 years next year. I mean, I can't even believe that. But you know, one of the reasons I do it obviously is to give back and to help others, you know, gain knowledge and think about how they can use these tools in their own life. But selfishly, I also love it.

Like I love having a conversation with you. And it's really interesting what you mean about transactional versus relationship. And I think that's a really good take-home point for everybody who's listening. You know, do you approach your day, if you're not doing a podcast, but I'm just thinking about in your work, in your life, are you approaching your day as like, how can I build a relationship with people that I meet versus how can I be transactional? I think you're going to get a lot of different results when it's more relationship-based and you're really thinking about, you know, how can I give to that person? How can I serve that person? But also how can I get to know them personally? And maybe one of the reasons people

don't do that on your podcast or they're hesitant is because, you know, talking about yourself, that's a little bit more scary than just talking about content and a book that you wrote. You know, it's a lot more vulnerable. Yeah. I think people, it's very rare that we aren't able to get it done, but some people get so caught up in what they do that they forget who they are. And when you get so caught up in what you do that you forget who you are, who you are becomes what you do. And that is very, very sobering to me. And sometimes I'll get off the podcast and Renee will be sitting in the back and she's like, I didn't hear anything about their life. And I was like, they weren't going there. They weren't going there. We couldn't get them because they're what they do. It doesn't correlate to who they are.

And maybe it's actually more of a facade. Maybe it's more of a and so rarely is. And listen, we're talking about like one or two guests of the. Oh, sure. Of the 52 interviews that we've done. I mean, you're there's so little of that, but I just, I just find it so powerful. I even had a guest that, you know, I, I started off the interview and I was like, I don't agree with anything this person's saying. And instead of going at them, I said, Hey, to your point about

doing 10 years, I could only imagine how much better you are today than you were when you started. Right. Or how better I will be every time I do an interview. I learned such a valuable lesson because I kept searching for common ground. And when I found common ground, it allowed me to look at this human in a different way. And curiosity is something that podcasts bring out in all of us. And so, you know, I love the relationship correlation. I love the take home of the relationship thing. I also think you hit on something that people can go into the new year with. And that is you can't just look at everything you do as a transaction.

Like a lot of people are unhappy with their careers or they're unhappy with where they are in life, but it's what you're doing and giving to the world. That's really what you're receiving. And so what I mean by that is if you go at this and you go into this career, this job, and you start today and you say, I'm going to give to everybody around me. I think you'll be shocked at how amazing your life can be, how great you might love your career, how, how you might look at things in a completely different way because it starts giving back to you too. But when you're only taking, it's not giving back to you and you're feeling empty. So it's such a good point. Absolutely. I completely agree that the energy

we give off is energy we get back. And I appreciate what you said about when we were talking about love. And when you're writing down yesterday about the relationships you wanted to cultivate, it wasn't about what you could take from other people. It was how could you give to other people and then write your focus on others, which I think is so powerful is that sometimes we forget that we become a little bit more selfish. Well, giving is selfish too. And what you have to learn is there's a way to be selfish and there's a way to do it the

right way. If you want to help yourself, then give of yourself, whether it's your unique ability to the world, whether it's in a relationship. I mean, my gosh, how much I wish the 20-year-old version of Scott could have learned these things 25 years ago, because it would have made early marriage so much easier for me. In the early parts of relationships, we often focus so much on how we feel loved versus how we give and show love. And we still do in relationships. Like it's something you have to catch yourself. You're like, Hey, I like this. And I like that. And this is important to me.

And the key is if you're providing the importance to someone else, as long as it's reciprocated, you know, that's so much more valuable and it's often reciprocated. It's just finding that love language or finding that, that connectivity. So it, same thing goes for the kids. You got to meet them. You got to meet them in the space that they're at. And that's really difficult with teenagers. So, you know, I have to even write down some of the things that really help them feel loved. And because it's hard to do it at this age. It is. And you have two boys, I have two boys, and it becomes, I think, a little bit more difficult with boys. Well, really cool. Thank you, Scott, for all those insights on your podcast. I want to ask you a few questions about your book, Freedom Street,

how I learned to create a rich life, live my legacy and own the future as a financial advisor. Where should we get started? And maybe just tell us a bit about why you wrote the book. Yeah. So interesting. Great question. Excuse me. Interesting enough, your my career has led me to a place where I started to work with financial advisors. The average age of a financial advisor in my industry is 62 years old. Okay. The average producing advisor, they are, there are more, there are more 80 year olds than there are 30 year olds. Okay. They just stay in. And what I found as I started to actually acquire practices, so this was the business that I went into is to go out and help advisors transition their practice to the next generation. I had a good connection with younger, you know, the grassroots advisors. I wanted to connect the dots, right?

Okay. What I learned was their impact, their what was who they were. And so many of them, that was all they had. Their entire impact was that. So when you talk about creating a rich life, living a legacy and owning the future, I was really excited to write the book because it helped everybody. It wasn't just financial advisors. Yes, it has a hint of that in the book because that's the career path I went on. But the truth is, is that so many people in their careers haven't defined what living richly really means to them. So I tell a story in the book where my young son, my oldest, who was probably only six at the time, maybe seven. And, you know,

we had a nighttime routine and, and gosh, as I get older, how much I miss that. I know I miss those moments where it was so innocent and so, so fun for me. But I, I, I, it got me thinking because my son asked me, dad, would you be rich without me or without us? And I remember that question just hitting me immediately. My initial response was, yeah, I mean, of course. All the money I spend on you. I knew how he was asking the question.

He meant money wise. He didn't mean it with the depth, but you know how such an innocent question. I immediately said, well, buddy, would I have more money? Yes. Kids are expensive, but, but you're not a cost to me. You're an investment in me. You're an investment in you. It's an investment for my life, living richly to me and having, having wealth, living a rich life is about how I'm showing up, who I'm giving to all the life model stuff that I talk about. And, and I, and, and so helping people find that and then living a legacy versus leaving a legacy was another important part because I found that they were so concerned with what they were going to leave behind. And in 21 years of helping people with their finances, parents come in here all the time. They're like, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to go here. I can't go do this dream thing I always wanted to do because I want to leave my kids this. And you're like, oh, my gosh, your kids, if they're good kids, don't want you to do that. They want you to live your life. They want you to show them and be an example to them on how to live life. So every day do something that's going to leave a better legacy, help someone be kind, make an impact, you know, and last but not least is, is, you know, owning your future. And that's really just laying out what, what is the most

important things? What are the most important things you're working towards and how are you building towards that? And so the book allowed me to go through a process to help people and, and help people really go through the process of defining rich life, living their legacy and owning the future. And I share stories of my life in that to help the reader understand that, by the way, I just share what I'm doing. I am humble. I have never said that just because I'm sharing it, I know the path of the way. I just have failed enough that I'm sharing these failures with people so that they can understand how I got to where I am today and how you might be able to own your own future.

Thank you, Scott, for saying that, because you're right, like you're human, I'm human, and we might know these ideas and we're able to write about them. I think about my book, Beyond Grit, you know, covers lots of different mental tools that lead to high performance. And I'm not perfect at them. I'm still a work in progress and still trying to utilize the tools every day. One of the things that you've said so far, you've said it a couple of times. I want to dive into it a little bit more. You said the difference between like leaving a legacy and

living a legacy. What is the difference there? Because I think people maybe don't take a step back to think that there is a difference and they maybe are more focused on leaving a legacy than living one. you accomplished in the course of your entire life? I've never been a huge fan of Lifetime Achievement Awards. And, you know, I watch and it's great. I mean, everybody, any Lifetime Achievement Award you see, I think they deserve it. I think it's amazing. I'm not saying that I don't agree with it. I just feel like it puts all of the energy on the end and it feels like the end. There's so much more wisdom to gain. You know, I don't know when Clint Eastwood got his Lifetime Achievement Award, but I guarantee he owns one. And I guarantee he did 30 more years of work.

He did 30 more years of impact and movies. And so I guess the first thing is it focuses on the end. And I think it's great to focus on the end, but I like to focus on the present moment, being where our feet are. Right. And so leaving a legacy while it's great is also financial. A lot of times it's like, oh, I'm going to leave this money to my kids or my grandkids or create generational wealth. Living a legacy is so basic that it comes down to how are you living each day? I talk about something called the habit of daily impact. And the habit of daily impact to me is something that I started many, many years ago.

Okay. And it's something that you can practice every day. It's building a habit of small, impactful decisions you make in your day, holding the door for someone, smiling at somebody, complimenting the person that's checking you out at the, if you still go to the checkout, I still go to the checkout at the grocery store, but I hate the robots, but I, but I will do it if I have to complimenting somebody in an elevator, putting your phone down and actually creating a conversation, you know, thanking the flight attendant when you're taking a flight, small

things, it's small acts of kindness that what happens is the responses you get make it so that you can't just do one. So eventually you start with doing one and then throughout your day, there are seven, 10, 20 things that you've done that make you feel better about your life. And you are living a legacy. It's also showing people around you, your family, your coworkers, your players, your teammates. It doesn't matter what it is.

You're showing them that you are acting the way that you believe and you're correlating the legacy you want to leave to the legacy that you're going to live. And I think that's really the connection point. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate the difference there on leaving a legacy versus living a legacy. And one way that you can live a legacy is this, the act of daily impact or the habit of daily impact, thinking about how do you want to show up? How do you want to give back? There's also something in the book that I just wanted to ask you a little bit about because in the chapter about road to riches, you've talked about scalability and scaling your business. And I thought there are people who listen to the podcast that are interested in scaling their business. So what have you learned in your process

helping people do that? And also your, you know, your background as a financial planner, tell us a bit about what you wrote about in that chapter. Yeah. So I started as just helping people build their plans and then I built a company and the company that I built has, you know, 40 plus advisors across seven states and it's become much, much bigger. Right. And so scaling, I scaled the individual practice into a multitude of, of multiple practices across multiple places, right?

It was the same recipe. So the thing is, is that you have to find the things that you do well and replicate them. And then you have to find the things that you don't do well. And usually, usually we have to find a coach for that, right? We have to find if I'm a great offensive coordinator or offensive minded coach, I've got to bring in a great defensive minded coach that helps me execute on both sides of the ball, right? So in business, scaling starts with really identifying what you're doing, how you're doing it, and why it's different from other people.

And then evaluating from there, what are the things that can be replicated by more manpower? What are the things that can be replicated that I do that I don't have to do every day? What are the things that are so important that they 10x each small decision? And I love going into a business. I don't care what business it is. If we have a conversation for an hour, we can talk and we can find together things that you're doing that you could replicate and amplify very, very quickly. And to me, that's what scaling is. It's not about cutting things that aren't important. It's really about creating that process and the system to replace the very things that you had to do manually for

so long. And so, and that could be human capital, that could be, you know, individual input. It could be data, it could be AI. I don't know what it is, but it depends on your business. And the key is if you're doing it well, one-to-one, you could probably do it well on an amplified scale. The second part to that is, do you want to? And why are you scaling? Because I think a question I had to ask myself many times was, okay, I know I can, do I want to? Sure. And where do you stop? Where is it no longer valuable? And what have you learned from for yourself in that regard? I think to constantly dive back into the why. So it really goes back into why am I doing this?

You know, sometimes you do something and you do it so many times, you know, we talked about it with your podcast, five years, 500 plus episodes, you know, I don't even know if you're at 600 now, but you're, you're definitely approaching. Yeah. You're approaching that. And, um, you have to ask yourself every year, why am I still doing this? And the key is if the why matches what you're doing and how it works in your life, it's great. But if you're just growing to grow, if you're just growing, like you ever meet the people that just constantly talk about growth and personal growth, but they don't spend any time actually in the space after they've grown in that space. And what I mean by that is they're always

going on to the next thing. You've got to sometimes actually practice where you're at to develop it at a deeper level. And what I learned was when to push the gas and when to tap the brake. And there were a lot more times that I had to tap the brake and say no because it would have completely blown up the car that I was driving. And so that's where, that's a really good lesson that I think I took away that I still practice

today. Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for that advice and like real world advice. There's one question I need to ask you at the end, right? And I appreciate all the things we've talked about, your podcast, your book, The Freedom Street, your secrets to success and planning the new year. I'm curious that there's a lot of financial planners and advisors who listen. So you've been in the profession a long time. You've seen people who've been successful, maybe people who didn't stick with it. What do you think are two of the, you know, two or three of the most important attributes of building a successful financial planning firm? What would you say, you know, what are the world's best do in that industry?

So the cool thing is we started out with relationships versus transactions. So the very first thing I would say is if you want to be great in this space, you have to touch people's lives. And it's not about the money. You have a relationship with the human, not their financial portfolio. And most people in the industry tend to have a relationship with the financial portfolio. But when you really dive deep in their life, you become a trusted partner. You become the third wheel that they needed in their life. You become the accomplice when someone loses their loved one. And only a relationship can actually allow people to trust you to the level that you need that trust to help them get to where they are.

The second thing is you have to have a team. You can't do it all on your own. And so I speak from experience. I can still remember turning over things to my first assistant years and years ago, 20 years ago and saying, oh, well, I could do it faster. I could do it better. I can know I have got to work through and with other people. It is a team sport. No matter what you want to think, you are not the

best at everything. And that's my own advice that I've told myself many times, not that I'm telling individuals and building the right team, even if it's a small team, everybody has to compliment each other. I use personality assessments. I use all kinds of aptitude testing to make sure that I'm hitting all the levels that matter. But that's something that's, that's really crucial. And, and last but not least is you have to love what you do and you have to love showing up every day. And, and I think it, it could be amplified to where for me, if the impact is what you do and it's your career, what are you doing outside of that? When I started a wine festival, um, you know, 14 plus years ago, and I saw that we were able to donate $175,000 to local charities in year one, I remember thinking, I don't know

that I love what I do as much as I thought. I think I love what it allows me to do in the world. And that reframing allowed me to start to make an impact in the community that went well beyond my career. And I'm so grateful because it gave depth to my career. So find the thing that gives depth to your impact, that gives depth to your career. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's coaching, maybe it's, you know, community outreach. Maybe it's that you're an amazing events planner and you can provide something the community, you know, really needs and it can give back in a way that, that you really feel special. And we all find what that is. And I think those are the things that I would focus on.

Love it. Love it. Thank you so much, Scott. I was, I was so fun to talk to you and learn more about your work. And I appreciated what we talked about today with your life model, like love, impact, faith, and energy, and helping people think about how they could consider those four areas in their life as they start the new year. We talked about a lot about relationships and versus transaction. And that's one of the biggest takeaways. I'm like, you mentored me on that and just thinking about how can I continue to be relationship focused. We were talking about at the end about what financial planners really do, right? The best, you said they're relationship focused. You need a team, love what you do and

find something that provides the depth for your work. And I appreciated also what we said about living a legacy versus leaving a legacy. So how can people find out more about your work? Hire you for speaking engagement, purchase your book, Freedom Street. Yes. So the book is on everything. I mean, it's Amazon. I think my wife ordered it from Target to support me. Okay. Love it. You can get it anywhere. You can visit me at scottdanner.com and that's for anything speaking related, any podcast, anything that we do, it's there. I highly suggest following on social, on YouTube and on Instagram and anything that you follow. I feel like getting the little tidbits sometimes are the ways that the message that I put out really resonates in short little clips.

And because it's reminders that I am telling myself and things that we're sharing. And so I love to make an impact that way. And last but not least, our company's name is Freedom Street Partners. You can go to freedomstreetpartners.com and anything you want to look at there is all out there. But I, Cinder, I'm very, very honored to have been a guest today and you made an impact on me. We got to sit at dinner and really learn about each other's careers and there was correlation. And so I'm just grateful for the chance to be a part of your show, one that's been going on for almost a decade, right at a decade.

Almost a decade, crazy. And I love to learn. So I'm watching you. I've loved learning about your show. I've loved going back and listening to some of the episodes. So thank you so much for having me on the show. Absolutely. Thank you, Scott.

I appreciate you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset mindset i'm giving you a virtual fist pump holy cow did that go by way too fast for anyone else if you want more remember to subscribe and you can head over to dr cindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to drcindra.com. See you next week.