Start With A Win - Lose the Ego and Celebrate the Wins

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

In this episode of Start With A Win, Adam and SWAW producer Mark pick up the conversation about Adam's first book, Start With A Win: Tools and Lessons to Create Personal and Business Success. Adam discusses the final chapters—chapters eight, nine, and ten. He discusses the role of the ego and how it has the potential to destroy humility. Adam elaborates the ego as the manifestation of insecurity, creating an emotional response triggered to protect vulnerabilities. Good leaders maintain emotional control by recognizing and acknowledging their egos and maintain transparency with themselves. Controlling your ego enables you to be vulnerable and accept others' mistakes, harnessing your abilities for positive attributes like confidence and decision-making. Adam discusses three keys to accountability and growth—mentors, coaches, and masterminds. Find a mentor who will challenge your thoughts and inspire you to take action with newfound perspectives. A mentor is someone willing to share time and wisdom in exchange for your attention and deliberate action to be the best version of yourself. A coach is someone who will unlock your potential and help you attain your goals and other pursuits. Ask yourself—are you coachable? What do you hope to accomplish with new insights? Mastermind groups provide peer accountability (challenging you and pushing you to be vulnerable) and establish the power of association—you are the average of the five people you accompany most. Adam emphasizes the importance of celebrating your wins, no matter how big or small. When leaders celebrate the wins of their team members, they instill hope, give appreciation, and provide recognition. Celebrating wins creates opportunities to surpass goals, build motivation, and exceed the maximum thought process in all endeavors. Uphold a transparent dynamic of analyzing, communicating, and celebrating wins to lead your team to maximize their potential and produce consistent results. Pre-order your copy of Start With A Win: Tools and Lessons to Create Personal and Business Success:https://www.amazon.com/Start-Win-Lessons-Personal-Business/dp/1119807077https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/start-with-a-win-adam-contos/1138838681https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/start-with-a-win-tools-and-lessons-to-create-personal-and-business-success_adam-contos/28078881/#edition=58850831&idiq=46017298Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. The book flyover. The book flyover. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, home of Remax World Headquarters. It's Adam Canto, CEO of Remax with Start With a Win with Producer Mark. Hey, buddy. That's right.

I'm here. Well, hey, I'm excited to talk about your book, Start With a Win. Oh, well, this is fun. The book. Because we're on the final three chapters now. Yeah. Nine to 10. And we're in the tools of how to start with a win.

As it says here, tools and lessons to create personal and business success on. That's right. Right there. Ta-da. OK. There you go. If you haven't already pre-ordered the book, pre-order the book, go to startwithwin.com. You find all the links there where you can get your very own copy. And also there's some perks

there, which are great. So if you want to buy a bunch of books for your team or something like that and potentially hang out with Adam and get some personal coaching, hey, buy some books. I'll tell you what, we've had a lot of pre-orders going on. I mean, we need even more. And the reason for this is, um, I gained nothing personally from you buying the book, uh, any orders, any proceeds from say author proceeds for sales of the book. So any checks that the publisher mails me for selling the book, I donate to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. So it's for the kids, you know, look at it that way. And, uh, and also you can pick up some leadership tips for your business and personal

success. And, uh, it's like everybody wins. So it's a great, great situation here. So that is all right. So let's talk eight, nine and 10. We got three chapters to kind of quickly go over. We don't have much time, but we'll get through these and hopefully leave people with some some gold. Yeah, that's let's do. I mean, chapter eight is really important to me because I in fact, I did a video this morning on on Facebook Live about this,

where I was talking about humility and really what is the opposite or the killer of humility. It's an ego. It's an ego. So chapter eight is actually called lose the ego. So when you, Mark, when you think about this, think about a leader that you know, or let's, let's call this a manager that you know, someplace. What's the biggest personal challenge that they have? It's usually their ego, isn't it? Yep. Yep. Them wanting to get the credit for everything or things done their way. Um, or them not wanting to look bad, or wanting to look really cool. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, the biggest challenge of a leader is an ego spun out of control. Because we all have egos, but you got to control your ego. You have to use it for the right

purposes, for confidence, for delivery, for... Things are scary as a leader. You have to use it for the right purposes, for confidence, for delivery, for, you know, things are scary as a leader. You have to take risks and chances and make decisions and things like that. You harness your ego for the right reason and use it to create a tailwind instead of a headwind in your relationships with other people. So, you know, really what is an ego? Let's dive into this. It's really an insecurity, an emotional response triggered to protect your own vulnerabilities. You know, and maybe those vulnerabilities are lack of knowledge or information, ignorance, inability to perform a task, things like that. It's okay to not be able to do something. Your job as a leader is to find somebody that can do it. I mean, that's true. Your job as a leader is to harness the capabilities

of others to accomplish tasks. That's it. I mean, it's nothing against you. So really what we see happen, Mark, when you think about a leader with an ego, they place blame on others, right? They're pointing fingers. They're like, well, such and such was responsible for this. So shame on them. It's their fault. Right. That's an egotistical remark by a leader instead of saying, hey, let's try and get things together and make this work out for everybody. Let's try and accomplish this task.

Doesn't matter what's happened in the past. Our job is the future. Right. Right. Yeah. And a leader takes responsibility, like instead of blaming their team or somebody else. Right. That says because really at the end of the day, if there's a failure that takes place, yeah,

maybe someone on your team has dropped the ball, but then maybe that's because of your poor leadership. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's a great point. Because think about this. When you see a leader with a big ego, they're pretty quick to jump on other people for small mistakes, right? So why do you think they're doing that? To hide their insecurities and vulnerabilities.

Because if they're in the process of attacking somebody else with their ego, they're hiding what they are incapable of accomplishing. Weird, isn't it? Yeah. But here's the reality. People make mistakes and we just need to be vulnerable and, and humble in order to accept those because, you know, it, ego is human nature. We're all given an ego to, to protect ourselves from nature, from, um, the pack in some

way, shape or form. We're, we're pack creatures. But we need to recognize that. And that's a great deal of leadership is that recognition and transparency with yourself and the vulnerability and recognizing, okay, hey, somebody's beating on my ego with an attack of some sort. You have to just recognize it, accept it. I'm not saying let people roll over you, but the reality is just understand that they are losing emotional control. You have to maintain emotional control as a leader. We talked about emotions before. And emotional control is ego control. It's ego control. You know, a lot of people also in business, they have an ego of this stuff is so great. You know, what's the biggest statement by,

uh, a business leader, my business is better than your business or by product is better than your product. Um, you know, one of the, the hardest things that I have to coach people through in business is, you know, you ask them, well, what of your product or service are you giving away? You know what? And generally we're talking about information to help people better themselves. It's related to your business. They're like, well, nothing, they have to pay for it. I'm like, give it to them for free and they'll come back and they'll pay for the rest. But the ego stops that. So we've got to help people. We have to help people. That's chapter eight, lose the ego. Super important. Lose the ego. So how do we get to this point? Well, I want to start, we get to this point through chapter

nine. Well, what do you know? Good transition there. And I call this one the trifecta, mentor, coach, and mastermind. Mentor, coach, and mastermind, three of my favorite words on this planet, Mark. And you know that. I know that. Yes. So let me start off with a quote. Be strong enough to listen, wise enough to ask, and kind enough to help. Strong enough to listen, smart enough to ask, wise enough to ask, kind enough. Oh, that's good. I like that. So I opened this chapter with that. Be strong enough to listen, wise enough to ask, and kind enough to help. So here's a reality, leaders or those that want to be. Find yourself these three things. Let's talk about what a mentor is, what a coach is, and what a mastermind is.

Okay? Because these are the levers for success for a leader, mentor, coach, and mastermind. I have all three of these I'm part of, and I do, and I participate in myself. Okay? So starting with a mentor. I've had a mentor for decades. In fact, I ended up running into the co-founder of Remax, Dave Linegar, in the mid 1990s. And he eventually became a leadership mentor of mine. Great friend, amazing human being leader, and somebody full of wisdom that you can sit down and ask questions of, and then we'll give you honest feedback on. So that's really what a mentor is. It's someone who's willing to share their time and wisdom with you, but not for free. And I don't mean you have to pay them with money. I mean you have to pay them with your attention

and your deliberate action to make yourself the best that you can be because they're a mentor to help you. They're not a mentor to be your entertainment. They're a mentor to make a difference in people's lives. And that's why people mentor others is they want to help people get better. They want to help develop leadership.

Or maybe even if, say, you're an artist and you have an artist mentor that can give you perspective on whatever art form you're involved in. Maybe it's singing or an instrument, music, or maybe it's painting or who knows what. But find yourself a mentor. My mentor, I wanted somebody who was a mentor in leadership who could help me with that. And I found Dave Linegar. And I've had other mentors that are fantastic. But the way you work with a mentor is you,

first of all, you have to ask this person, hey, will you mentor me, please? And then every now and then you say, hey, can I grab an hour, you know, one of these times? I'd love to bring you a cup of coffee or, you know, what have you, because I'd love to pick your brain about some things. Here's the questions I want to ask you, whatever it is. I mean, your job is to accommodate 100% the mentor. And the mentor's job is to give you wisdom in exchange for your attention and your commitment to take action as it's needed to be taken. Because a lot of times you go to a mentor because you want them to validate your opinion on something. Right. Okay. That's one of the big mistakes that mentees go through. They're like, so here's the

situation. Here's what I think I should do. What do you think? And you're looking for them to go, yep, great job. Doesn't work that way. You hear their perspective and their opinion. If you choose to ignore it, then you choose to ignore it. You continue to ignore the advice of a mentor for too long, and you kind of wonder, why are they your mentor? So find somebody who's going to challenge your thought and give you great perspective to take wonderful action. But know they're not just wanting to waste their time.

So that's a mentor. So, Mark, you know I love this next one. Yep. Coach. Coach. Yeah. So yeah. So shout out to my coach, John. And I've had many, many coaches, some women, some men, probably about 50-50 on that. Don't only go find a coach that, you know, don't, if you're a guy and you're a leader, don't just go get a bunch of guy coaches. You need perspective. You need perspective. The coaches, the women coaches in my life, I had some that are like PhDs, psychologists, doctors, things like that. Amazing. I mean, just to take, it's go get perspective for crying out loud from different people, different backgrounds, different religions, different angles on life, different experiences, but find some good coaches. So what's a coach? Coach is somebody you pay for their information. You pay them and you pay them rather healthily, I guess

you could say. But the reality is you get what you pay for on a coach. Don't go, that's too much. Well, what do you hope to get out of it? Because as a business leader, I hope to increase shareholder value. I hope to increase my leadership capabilities to help my employees be the very best that they can be, serve my customers the very best that I possibly can, create an amazing organization above and beyond where it's at today by doing one thing. What does a coach do? They unlock your potential. Unlock your potential. Now, here's an interesting question for you, though. And I take you back to Lose the Ego, the last chapter. Are you coachable? Right. We've talked about that before.

Yeah, we have. So, I mean, there's a book, The Trillion Dollar Coach, and it talks about a Silicon Valley coach who's coached a lot of the top business leaders in Silicon Valley. And he always asked his, his coachees, are you coachable before he started coaching? Because you can't coach somebody who doesn't want to be coached. They can pay you all day long, but you can't coach someone who doesn't want to be coached. They have to lose that ego. They have to be vulnerable. And sometimes people don't mesh. And let me just be real with you here. A coach is not a lifetime person. A mentor could be a lifetime person, a coach. Nope. At some point, you're going to look at each other and go,

we've gotten everything we can out of each other. It's time to move on. You got it. So I've had about six coaches personally, and they're all fantastic people, and I love all of them to death. They're just amazing human beings. And I could go back to any of them today and say, hey, I have a question. And, in fact, I get calls from some of them saying, hey, I have a question, Adam, because we got to know each other so well. But what does a coach do? They unlock your potential and they make you better.

Now let's move on to the third one here, the trifecta. Because we've talked about one-on-one interaction in order to improve our leadership and that vulnerability and accountability. Most of the accountability in those aspects come from emotional accountability comes from that mentor. The mechanics and the business and the metrics and the KPI accountability come from the coach generally. Coaches do coach a ton of emotional control, though. Emotional intelligence and emotional maturity. But really where you're totally vulnerable is in a group setting with your peers. Peers.

Peer accountability is unbelievably powerful. And you get that in a good setting with your peers. Peers. Peer accountability is unbelievably powerful. And you get that in a good mastermind. And Matt, let me be clear. Light coaching masterminds are not free. Do not go, hey, I want to go to the free mastermind because you're not going to get anything out of it. I believe you pay to pay attention. You pay to pay attention.

It's like if school was free, do you think people would care? No. Big deal. You got a lot at stake there in your college tuition and things like that. But the reality is you got to pay to pay attention. And you learn a lot in a mastermind. And a lot of times you do this thing called the hot seat, where you go sit on the hot seat in front of everybody and they get to drill you with questions and you better be ready to answer them. And you're going to get responses back that may hurt. Some are going to feel good, but you're going to get honesty. Don't join a mastermind where they don't deliver honesty.

Exactly. Their goal is to push you to be better. And what do you get in a mastermind where they don't deliver honesty. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Their goal is to push you to be better. And what do you get in a mastermind? Truly, more than anything else, you get power of association. The average of the five people we spend the most time with, Jim Rohn said that, find a mastermind that brings you up. And when you show up for a mastermind, don't show up empty-handed or you're not going to be there long.

Your job is to contribute so much that people are like, Mark, I can't wait for you to come back to the next mastermind because I learned so much from you. So that's what we got. There are a lot of mastermind groups out there. You can go find one. There are some, it's a business for some people, which is great. That's great.

But go to a good one. If you're going to join a mastermind, say, I'd like to take a test drive. Can I attend one, please? And unless it's like one of those mastermind events where it's like a one-off, but if it's like a regular group setting where you're paying per month or whatever to go every couple of weeks, then see if you can stop by for a few minutes and take a look at it. You're probably not going to stay for the whole session because you got to pay attention, but find yourself a good mastermind. I'm in a couple of them.

I love them. I'm going to go meet with those guys again here pretty soon here in the next couple of weeks. And we will beat the heck out of each other's business. So last chapter, Mark. Yeah, bringing it all home. Bringing it all home. Wrapping it up with a tiny little bow.

Mark, we got to celebrate the wins. We got to celebrate the wins, buddy. Because so many times we go head down. Oh, by the way, celebrate the wins is the title of chapter 10. Nice. Yes. I open this with another one of my quotes. Listen to the birds.

Your team singing. You got to, why do birds sing? They're happy. They're communicating. When you're out there in the forest and birds are singing everywhere, chirping, loving and stuff, what happens when they stop singing? Why do they stop singing? They're not happy and there's a threat. So listen for the birds. Are they singing or are they not singing? Are you celebrating the wins or are you hard on them as an oppressive manager? You want to get the birds singing, happy, productive,

doing bird things, okay? You instill hope by celebrating wins. So, you know, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, wrote a book in the 1930s, I guess it was. Incredible book. I encourage everybody to read it. The two things we can't give ourselves are personal attention and appreciation. You don't have to celebrate huge wins. You just have to celebrate wins and give that personal attention and recognition to people. Start doing that. And people are going to be like, what's going on? I had this talk with a bunch of leaders the other day and they're like, well, they do what's expected of them. I'm like, great. Stand them

up in front of each other and tell them how proud you are of them for doing that and see how much more you can get out of them because they're proud of doing what they do. We don't want people that meet the minimum standard. We want people that exceed the maximum thought process. So it's like, hey, we have a sales goal of 20. You want somebody going, I'm going to hit 25 instead of, do I still get to be employed for hitting 10? Which one do you want? Celebrate the wins. Don't overlook that. Analyze, celebrate, talk about, but the reality is let's be transparent with our people. Tell them what we like, our key people indicators, KPI 2.0 instead of key performance indicators and our return and not ROI return on investment, but return on wins, ROW. Put those things to work and celebrate your wins.

That's how you start with a win. Love it. I think this is great, man. I'm, I'm stoked for you. I'm stoked. This book is coming out soon. And, uh, there's, I think there's just so much great stuff in this book for leaders and, um, that is just gonna get people excited and, and motivate them. And, uh, so yeah, this, this has been good. I'm glad we've gotten, gotten to kind of get a little behind the scenes of this book. And, um, again, if you haven't ordered it, head over to startwithawin.com and make sure you pre-order your copy and, um, you know, get inspired or inspire somebody else. You know, if you know a business leader or somebody who's, you know, struggling a little bit, Hey, start with a win. Well, Hey Mark. Yeah. I just want to say, um, huge thanks and shout out

to you. You've been such an instrumental part of putting this book together. Uh, I so much sincerely appreciate our friendship, our business relationship, the leadership you've provided to me and all the wins that we've been able to do together. Yeah, man, it's been fun. A lot of wins. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you very much. Well, awesome. Well, thanks so much guys. And, uh, until next time, remember start with a win. Thank you.