The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Forget That! 22 Lessons You Must Unlearn to Succeed by Roger E. Flax

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Forget That! 22 Lessons You Must Unlearn to Succeed by Roger E. Flax Horizontalentdeveloper.com Amazon.com Follow the guidance of motivational expert Dr. Roger Flax, author of No Stopping You! and learn to be your best self. What if you were told that many of the common principles you've held onto since childhood are actually holding you back in your career and life? From simple adages we learned in grade school--"don't talk to strangers," "save it for a rainy day"--to well-intentioned ideas you learned later--"treat all people the same," "do one thing at a time"--respected corporate leadership guru Dr. Roger Flax covers twenty-two lessons you must unlearn to find success. Forget That! shows you the fatal flaws in twenty-two common principles we've all learned throughout life and gives you actionable tools to counteract them. Dr. Flax shows you the pitfalls of following these ideas and how they can derail your career and ruin your relationships. This book is an expert's toolkit for overcoming "common knowledge," reading people better, understanding human nature, communicating more effectively, and maximizing productivity. Whether you work in the corporate world, a small business, work for yourself, or are just starting out on your career path you will find invaluable guidance in these pages. As an executive coach, motivational speaker, and corporate consultant, Dr. Roger Flax has worked with over four hundred major international companies for over five decades. Reading this book is like having a life-changing one-on-one personal coaching session with this dynamic, successful, driven leader. Forget That! is a roadmap to finding your best self. BE THE BEST YOU!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, this is Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Hello, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are ladies and gentlemen that makes official welcome to 23, Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

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ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and

and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen those crazy places on the internet. Today we had an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his hot new book that comes out April 22nd, 2025. It is called, forget that 23 lessons. You must unlearn to succeed. We have Roger E. Flax, doctor is doctorate PhD on the show in 1970. He founded one of the America's most successful leadership development consulting

firms, which has since connected thousands of programs for over 400 major international companies as an executive coach, speaker, and corporate consultant. He's impacted millions. He's appeared on CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, TV, and USA Today, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business Week, Barron's, and his peak of media exposure on The Chris Foss Show happens today. He spends most of his free time pursuing his passions, tennis, songwriting, and filmmaking. Welcome to the show. How are you, Dr. Flax? Dr. Flax Great. Call me Roger. Good to see you. Pete Slauson So, Roger, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Dr.. Horizen, www.horizontalentdeveloper.com.

My email is Roger, without a D, R-O-G-E-R, at Horizen-Edge, Horizen-Edge.com. Pete So, give us a 30,000 over you, what's inside your new book? Roger Forget that is based on things that I learned over the years that I was taught by professors, by teachers, by parents, by friends, by the parents of friends. And a lot of those things, they were wrong, because when we're a kid, we're like a sponge and we take everything in and we do what we're told to say. So I wrote a book called Forget That, which takes 22 things that we were taught, but we

must unlearn these things to be more successful. Yeah. And there's a lot that we're dumped on, especially by people maybe who don't know any better. You get that a lot of advice when you want to become an entrepreneur. People are like, oh, don't do that. Most people fail at that. You know, don't do this. Some people, you know, they're not really looking to sabotage you.

Some people are. I mean, they're just like, hey, you shouldn't do that. That sounds like a great way to mess up your life or something. Dr. Richard P. Bolling, Ph.D. You're so right. My father said to me, you have a Ph.D. Be a professor, be a teacher. I said, Dad, I want to start a business. I think

I want to be an entrepreneur. No, no, they fail. Anyway, that was a half a century ago. Pete Slauson They fail. And you've, of course, since proved them wrong, so good for you. So, what inspired you to want to write this book? What was the motivation behind it? Dr. John Gerstle Many years ago, I gave a speech. I was captain of the tennis team in my town. We had never lost in three years. And I gave a speech and my notes fell off the podium to the front row and my kids, my friends, everyone was there and making me laugh.

And one of the kids ripped up my notes and all of a sudden I had no notes and I had to speak in front of 700 kids without notes. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna speak spontaneously but all the books said you just have to rehearse, you have to memorize, you have to write it out, you have to outline it and all these things. I had nothing anymore. All I had was spontaneous thinking and spontaneous speaking. So I got away from the podium. I gave the speech. I not only remembered everything I wanted to say, but all of a sudden I was funny. I was a little bit of a jokester. And more ideas

came to me in that 20 minutes. And I realized that public speaking, Chris, was taught incorrectly. It was taught, you were taught to memorize, you were taught to write it out, to outline it, to rehearse it a hundred times or five times. It's still taught that way. I didn't do any of that stuff because I couldn't. And I gave the presentation, it went perfectly. And around eight years later, I started a company all around the whole area of speaking spontaneously with little or no notes, no need to over rehearse and I've done it now thousands of times with so many people and it works because that's the natural way to publicly speak.

Pete Yeah. I mean, you know, the free flow of ideas, sometimes you can be constrained by the concepts of, you know, I've been on stage and been trying to go, what was I supposed to, where was I in this and what am I supposed to be doing? You know, and you have that format and you're like, you know, and there's been times where I've scrapped it and just gone into free form thing of talking and that seems more natural. David Sinclair And a fraternity brother of mine at the University of Maryland was a kid named Larry David. And I'm sure we know who Larry David is, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld.

And Larry never uses notes and there's no scripts and he speaks spontaneously with all his shows and he has his actors and actresses do the same. So you're totally right. But I learned the hard way because I gave many speeches when I had to memorize poems when I was a kid and I forgot them. And I, like millions of people, got traumatized by that. Pete Slauson Traumatized by all the fun. Pete Slauson I had to memorize Oh Captain, My Captain and the Gettysburg address, and in the middle

I forgot, and I was very traumatized. And I think it contributes to, like for me, memorizing things is really difficult. I can memorize things like concepts and ideas and stuff, but freeform talking, if I try and follow the order, it can be hard. And you know, we're kind of taught to do that in life. Memorize this, memorize this piece of music that someone wrote. And one of the things I used to do when I used to play guitar and play piano and write music was I didn't practice other people's stuff so much.

I mostly tried to find my own voice and do my own thing. And I would see a lot of people that were trapped into the memorizing process that they were just kind of locked in that gear, and they couldn't create their own music. They can only just play other people's. So I think it really helps with the originality and the, I don't know, the free flow of ideas, if you will. Dr. Robert J. D. Dyer, Ph.D. Definitely. You see, they did studies on how fast we think versus how fast we speak. We speak at around 125, 150 words a minute. We think at around 400 to 500 words a minute.

So that differential between how fast we speak and how fast we think means we can think on our feet, we can be spontaneous. And that's the whole concept of spontaneous speaking. We can think much faster than we speak, but if we have notes and scripts and outlines and memorization, we're not using that 400, 500 words a minute to think. Pete Slauson Yeah. Yeah. We're just following the thing. And you know, I think you can kind of tell, I think you can tell when people really have their speech memorized, but you know, it comes off as really boxed or planned. But you know, sometimes

people practice their speeches or their delivery so much, it does come across as natural. Dr. John Gerstle That's 100% correct. They do it so many times that it's now memorized, they get up there and they forget and all you hear is, you know, and all those habit words. And then they look down at their notes and guess what? They can't find where they are. And they start to sweat and they go crazy. And that is why millions of people fear public speaking. But the key really is to be spontaneous. Do you use notes, Chris, when you're on the phone with people?

Chris No. Chris Do you use notes when you're in the hallway talking to someone? Of course not. We don't need notes. We don't use notes, but we get up and speak publicly and suddenly we do something unnatural. Chris Yeah, yeah. And that's maybe why people struggle with it more. I mean, you know, if you just go natural, you can be fine and it just free flows. Gary F. Hachner Yeah, now, you have to organize your talk, you have to have triggers that jog your memory, you have to start with a purpose and have

facts to back it up, the impact of what you're talking and then the actions that you want your listeners to take. So you have to jog your memory a little, but when you give the presentation and you know 80 or 90 percent of what you're talking about, that 10 percent, no one in the audience says, hey Chris, you left out 10 percent, why'd you do that? They don't care, they don't know. And that's the problem. People give these presentations and they think they have to be 100% exact. And when they read it, just to your point, a few minutes ago, they have a monotone voice, they're not believable, and sometimes they

say words and misread them and the audience bursts out laughing. They don't even know what's going on. So, it's a crutch that's got to be removed. And that's one of the lessons unlearned in the book. Forget that. Pete Yeah, it's interesting. So, you have 22 lessons you must unlearn. Can you tease out maybe a couple to us? Dr. Michael Bauer It would be my pleasure. One is called, Don't Speak to Strangers. Now, you and I and your listeners were told by our parents and everyone else, don't talk to strangers. Okay, that was right when we were younger.

Yeah, but that's a lesson we must unlearn and I'll give you an example why. I was watching a person and seeing him that hit tennis balls watching a person and seeing him that hit tennis balls beautifully. And I stopped and I went up to that person. He was serving around 100 miles an hour. He was a stranger. I said, sir, you're a very good tennis player. Oh, thank you. Are you a player? Yeah, I am. Maybe we'll play some time. Okay. And then he asked me what I did for a living. And I said, I'm in the leadership development business. He goes, why don't you write a book? And I said, I have one. What do you do? He goes, I'm the publisher of a company. Can I read your book? That happened because I spoke to a stranger. He was the publisher of a shed. That was the publisher of my first book.

Blackstone is now the publisher of that. And forget that. And he read the book and he said, don't get an agent. Had I not have spoken to a stranger, then I never would have met the publisher. I probably wouldn't have a book. I dreamt of having a book out and I spoke to strangers. So that's another one. Another one, Chris, is stress is bad for you. How many times have you heard stress will kill you?

Yeah. All right. So, I tell people in my training seminars and in general, there's good stress and there's bad stress. There's distress. We want to figure out how to channel and get rid of it. And there's you stress, which is positive. The holidays, getting gifts, getting a raise at work.

So when you have a problem, if you know how to reduce that stress, you can use the stress to your advantage. Stress energizes you. So there's a very simple technique. It's the ABC technique. When you are stressed by a problem, ask yourself, is it an A? That's life or death. Is it a B? That's very aggravating, but it's not life or death. Is it a C? This traffic on the way to the city and the tunnel is an hour delay.

Ask yourself it's an A, B or C and then realize the only problems you have are A problems. The Bs and Cs go away. And that's one of the ways to manage stress. And people have stress, but they have to figure a way to reduce it. But stress isn't that bad for you. Sometimes it energizes and motivates and inspires you. And when you're playing sports, if you're not feeling stress at the beginning of that basketball game or that tennis match, you're going to have a hard time getting up for the match. It's actually good to be stressed and to be tense in sports,

for example, and in public speaking too. Pete Slauson I mean, what are you going to do? Be relaxed and try playing a game? Dr. Robert J. D. Dyer I wouldn't fall asleep, but to be a little nervous and to be a little tense, you have more adrenaline flowing. Pete Slauson You know, I mean, they've shown that people who keep activities after they retire, they live longer.

If they don't, they end up dying sooner because we're all kind of purpose driven, I think, as a human species and the need for us to be serving a purpose and working and being active and stuff. And so, you know, a lot of people have those issues. Dr. Michael O'Brien And it's such a good point you're making. People say, I can't wait to retire. They go to Florida, they go to Arizona. And six months later, they have no purpose anymore. And suddenly they become ill. And I call it refire, don't retire. Refirement, not retirement. Because if you don't have a purpose and an objective in the morning, and at the end of the day, you say, you know, I accomplished something, you're missing quite a bit.

Pete Slauson Yeah. You're missing a lot actually, yeah. So, Duke, tell us about your upbringing, your journey through life. What got you into the fields that you were in who inspired you? Duke I was a little league pitcher throwing curveballs and I got a sore arm and all of a sudden, I couldn't throw the balls as hard as I wanted. My father said let's try tennis and he taught me tennis and the next thing I know is I'm in tennis tournaments. The next thing I know I'm 14 or 15 years old and I'm

teaching people how to tennis, play tennis and I really loved teaching, coaching and motivating. So between tennis and growing up with a father who was pushing me, I decided after college and graduate school to start a company that could help people, train them, and develop them, and really using sports as an analogy quite frequently. So what motivated me was a father who really pushed me hard, the sport of tennis, wanting to help people, and then taking the risk and starting a business. And I was very lucky. It's a tough business, but I got a major client at the very beginning.

And I'm doing it now a half a century. And I love it as much as I did then because all I do, I get the honor to help people make them better and make their dreams come true in terms of leadership skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills. Pete Slauson Awesome, Sauce. That's great. And so, tell us about some of the work you do on your website, some of the service you offer to clients, etc., etc. Yeah. So around 25 years ago, a company, a client said to me,

can you develop a perception test that shows people how they think they are versus how they really are? And I said, that would be a great idea. So I studied approximately 200 people I felt were winners, and what were the characteristics of these people? I found there were 21 characteristics. I developed 105 questions around these 21 characteristics. I called it the Horizon Talent Developer. And we have it through the website or through companies. And basically what you do is you fill out a questionnaire, it's all digitized, and you see

how you see yourself versus how the world sees you in terms of how decisive you are, your listening skills, your communication skills, your problem solving, your creative thinking, 21 areas, and now you can see this is how I think I am, this is how the world sees me. And suddenly, it is so eye-opening for people to realize, you know what? I can be even better because now I know who I am. So that's something that we do either through the website, I do it through my company, and I've had the pleasure of doing it with so many people who tell me that it's life-changing changing and it also helps their marriages and parenting with kids, parenting with kids, and it just makes them a better person. So that Horizon Talent developer. Pete Slauson That will do it. So as we go out, give us a 30,000 overview. What's it,

you know, give us a pitch out to people to order the book and find out more about you. Dr. Grager You can get it through Amazon. It's called Forget That, 22 Lessons You Must Unlearn to Succeed. As far as the future goes, I'm now writing a book called Ignite and Excite, How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking. So what you heard at the beginning of this and the whole area of speaking more spontaneously, I'm in the middle of that book. And then I'm writing a book which I've started called Life is a 12 chapter book. And I've divided it into from the first two minutes or so of life to the last hour or so, I divided it into 12 chapters. So I'm doing that, I'm still conducting seminars. into 12 chapters. So I'm doing that. I'm still conducting seminars. As you may know, I'm a filmmaker, so there's a movie I plan to make next year about an elephant that falls

in love with a mouse. I've written the music and I plan to make the movie. And I'm going to stay busy because when you stay busy and you have goals and dreams, you never get bored and you actually feel better. Pete Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. It was a pleasure and honor and keep up the great work. I love your show. Thank you very much, Roger.

We love having you. Folks, order the book wherever fine books are sold. It is called, Forget That, 22 Lessons You Must Unlearn to Succeed succeed out April 22nd, 2025. Thanks to everyone for tuning in. Be good to each other, stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.