The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – VisionMaker, Your Vision Made Easy by James Ballidis

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

VisionMaker, Your Vision Made Easy by James Ballidis https://vision-maker.net Biography James Ballidis is a CEO mentor, WSJ best selling author, lawyer, and entrepreneur. Wouldn't you like to create - not just a ordinary vision, as most of us have tried - but a compelling vision, that acts as a magnet for your business, employees, customers and profits? Impossible some say, but the proof is there. We must control the vision killers, and an evolution is needed in the way we create our visions, from Find My Why, to Find Our Why. He has mentored CEOs to double and triple revenue, and helped those CEOs stuck at 6 or 7 figures. It starts with Vision, in an evolutionary way.

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, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, folks. That makes it official. When the fat lady sings the opera lady with the iron outfit there you used to see in the Bugs Bunny commercial, that's when you know you've officially rang the bell at the Chris Foss Show. So welcome. Remember, the Chris Foss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law because, I don't know, she's sick of you. Anyway, guys, we are going to be talking about vision and a whole lot of amazing, cool things today that we're going to be talking about in inspiring teams, igniting your business, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but in the meantime,

we need you to support the show. I mean, for 15 years, we've been bringing you the smartest people on this show and, uh, they've been sharing their wonderful ideas. We're bringing you three to four episodes a weekday, 15 to 20 a week. And I need to guilt and shame you into sharing this love and giving referrals to your family, friends, and relatives to say, sign up for the Chris Voss Show podcast. It's the best thing you'll ever listen to. Or not. But sign up anyway. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com for it says Chris Voss. YouTube.com for it says Chris Voss. YouTube.com for it says Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com

for it says Chris Voss. And let's see, what else is there? There's the new Chris Voss Facebook.com where you can go, you can chat with the show and all that good stuff. I get on there. I get on the little chat there and I'm like, hey, how's everyone going? There's a really cool guest on today and

you guys missed out, eh? So that's the sort of thing that goes on in that chat. There's no Snapchat going on, though. There's no discussion of the Chris Voss Show on Snapchat, and there never will be. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's going to be joining us to talk about vision and all of the sort of wonderful things that you can possibly do. We have Jim Belitis on the show with us today, and he is a vision maker, an entrepreneur, a CEO, mentor, and also an attorney.

There you go. He slid that in at the end. And he's also a Wall Street Journal bestselling author as well. And he helps people with vision and building a compelling vision that can act as a magnet for your business, employees, customers, and profits. And he puts the proof in his newest book that's going to be coming out. We're going to be talking about today. And he talks also about how to control the vision killers.

We all know those people, those vampires. And it's time for a new evolution in the way we create visions from how to find my why to find our why. He's mentored CEOs to double and triple revenue and help those CEOs stuck at six to seven figures. And it all starts in vision, which is one of my favorite things to do his new book that's coming out is called vision maker your vision made easy welcome the show james how are you i'm terrific thank you very much chris great introduction maybe i ought to have you do all my introductions that's okay people have talked about me for interest they just want me to walk around like uh here ye here you, here you, you know, one of those

Roman emperor sort of announcers here, enter is Caesar Augustus into the room, something like that. I think you ought to do it like a racetrack, you know, like a racetrack, uh, Jim's going around the bend and, uh, he stands up to the plate. So welcome to the show. Give us your.com. So if you're going to find you on the inroads, please. Um, let's, let's make sure everybody knows You can go to vision-maker.net, and that's the place where

you can see all about me. But if you're interested in the book that I'm going to be talking about today and the concepts in the book, go to visionmakerbook.com, and you'll find the book and the opportunities that'll be there to sign up. I'll let you know when it comes out in January. There you go. And by doing so, they can gain access to a community that you're building, possibly a free download. Does that sound right? Yeah, it's true.

I have a couple of things. I'm just really starting on this. I've never been one to be on a lot of podcasts and do this kind of thing. So this is kind of new for me. But I think it's a community that's just calling out to be built where we can get together and collaborate on our visions in a way that just isn't available. One of the things I offer as a process that we can go through is to collaborate because oftentimes we just keep it within ourselves, right? It's my vision. This is my why. This is what I'm doing. So, yeah, we're building a community. There's a lot of exciting things coming.

I just get all fired up about it. There you go. Well, we'll get fired up here on the show. Amazon Disco is available over there, so people can sign up and all that good stuff. So give us the overall 30,000 view of the book and what it's going to entail. Well, the long and short of it is that most entrepreneurs, business owners, they get stuck. They don't know what to do. I heard a fella who had a difficult last name to, Reitzheimer or something like that. I really liked him on your show.

Oh, yeah. And a couple of other people. So I've been recently kind of, oh, gee, this all ties together. I'm drifting a little bit around on this 30,000 point view. But the truth is that I think that a lot of what we're struggling with has to do with vision.

And we just closed ourselves down on this vision idea. It's been long enough that we've sort of been stuck here. Entrepreneurs, CEOs are finding themselves stuck because I was stuck. I recognized I needed to get out of that, and I worked out a process. I started saying, hey, do you want to try this? And when my CEOs did and they got great results, I thought, okay, we got to share it.

So that's really what the book's about and what I'm trying to get across. Gives you examples, gives you stories, tells you the truth about where we are and where we need to be, and provides you with a three-week process to put yourself through that will help you to create a dynamic vision, one that doesn't sit in the desk drawer, right? There you go. Or on the PR page. A lot of people put out vision on the PR page and then they never execute on it. Do you know how many CEOs I ask what their vision is?

They can't even tell me. 99%. It's high. It's really high. They're stumbling through it. That's obviously compelling. They're probably like, what's a vision? That's what I get. What's a vision?

I don't know. This is something I had at a ayahuasca event. Is that the same thing in a sweat launch? What's going on? I had a vision one time. It was half a bottle of vodka. It was Tito's. There you go.

Get a check from Tito's, will you? Anyway, so what is a vision? When we kick around this term, a lot of people don't seem to know what it is. What is having a vision in the scope of what we're talking about? Yeah. I think from a business standpoint, that's the area that I focused on, but it can go much broader than me. I'm just a small wheel here in this bigger idea. But the concept of vision is something that you personally are attached to, that you feel deep down inside is something that's meaningful to you, and it gives meaning to what you're doing. So if you're doing a business, why are you doing the business?

Like this show, Chris, why are you doing this show? You can come up with more profitable. Yeah, being of service to somebody or something like that. The judge says I have to actually. Yeah, but when you're at a flat line, when you're in a spot where you're stuck, really that's when you start asking yourself, well, is it worth it?

And that's when we start recognizing, you know what, why am I doing this? And when we get in touch with it, then suddenly we have a much more realistic viewpoint, not only just of our why, but a viewpoint that allows other people to join in, not just support you, but to join in to that vision. There you go. And that's when it gets really exciting. That's what vision is to me. Now, I do this show for community service, which I just didn't have to.

A couple of years, I'll get the ankle bracelet off. So that's how it works. Perfect. Maybe. How far away are you from that? I don't know. We've been doing the show for 15 years, but I don't know. I'll have to check with my pro agent uh no i love doing this show

um but uh you know i think you kind of identified it when you said knowing your why or knowing about the why um because people need to you know you can easily do stuff like okay so what are we doing today well we're going to push the paper from this side of the desk to that side of the desk. And then tomorrow we're going to move it back to the other side of the desk, you know, and, and, and whether you're a company, uh, or, or I think anybody really, you know, having a vision of the long-term goals of what you want to achieve, why you're doing what you're doing, uh, helps you understand, you know, how to do it better and what, what and what to do. Because if you don't understand your why, you're just wandering around going, what are we doing?

I don't know. I did some accounting. Can I get my check? And I'm going home. Yeah. In fact, I remember on a podcast, I listen to you often. And on a podcast, you said one time in your experience was you were an entrepreneur CEO. And sometimes people were just mailing. They were there collecting their paycheck, right?

And then other times you have people that are really highly motivated. So the question is why? Why do this, not just that they believe in it, but they're really attached to it, then suddenly they're full-time in it. And it doesn't have to be this idea that, well, you know, I'm going to save the earth. It doesn't have to be such a vision. There's nothing wrong with that vision, but it doesn't have to be that vision. It can be something much more down to earth and pragmatic, but directly related to why it is that you want to influence the people that are around you and supporting you. Find my why is the first step.

Simon Sinek was brilliant writing the book. I think it's an awesome book. I refer to it often and give it to people if they need to find their why. But the truth is nobody cares about your why. So once you find your why, the evolutionary stage now that we need to go through is to say, okay, now that I really understand my why in leadership, how is it that this why that I have here is relatable to other people? And when you start connecting at that level by asking yourself, why do I care so much about it? And you get to that core fundamental reason why, then you'll find what other people also feel strongly about.

And then you take phase two, which is to collaborate. When you collaborate, you start to get all kinds of people excited around you. It's not collaborating on how to do it. It's collaborating on the fact that you're doing it together. You're creating the vision together. That's when it gets really on fire. And this is the key to inspiring people. You talk about in the bottom of your book, three weeks to creating a powerful vision that will inspire your team and ignite your business. And, you know, you look at any great CEO, Steve Jobs, how he inspired people to, you know, save Apple,

to bring it back from kind of the edge when he came back, to build the iPhone, you know. I mean, his vision for the iPhone was extraordinary because, you know, even up until the time they announced it, it still wasn't working. It wasn't working after he announced it either, um, on a consistent basis. And they spent, I think another six to nine months trying to firm it up. Um, the, um, uh, but his vision of inspiring people to go, you know, we're going to move that mountain over there and people are like, how are we going to

move that mountain? I don't know. We're going to move move it we're going to figure it out and uh so all through history there are great leaders uh you can say political leaders like maybe george washington or or other people who had visions you know the people who are the framers of our declaration when you read their notes from the federalist papers um you you it's extraordinary the vision they had like you just sit and read it and just go man you guys saw 200 300 years in the future um but they you know they understand human nature doesn't change uh and so having a powerful vision is kind of a core tenant i think of being a leader of getting people to follow you of getting people to follow you, of getting people to follow your leadership, because people will buy into a vision. And if you don't have any vision as a leader, good luck getting people to follow you.

That's my opinion. I agree 100%. And what's really interesting is that the people that you're mentioning seem to feel a bit extraordinary, don't they? A little bit like beyond us, a little bit bigger than I can think of myself. So I vision kill myself, right? And it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't have to be that way. If we start thinking in a little bit different way as to how we're going to approach the concept of vision, you see, this is a great time to segue into the vision killer.

So when we're young, and I'll tell a story about this in a moment, but when we're young, we're very impressionable. A lot of things happen when you're young. You're a great visioner as a child. And then as you start to grow up, your parents do what? They start to tell you, well, you know, you got to go make money. You got to go figure out something else. If you declare what you want to do.

Hey, I want to be a podcast host. Oh, no, Chris chris come on let's get a job that pays money right and so it's just our vision is crushed yeah so we don't pursue them and we need to we need to turn that around now how do we fight off these vision killers once The vision killer always, always is acting, is talking about execution. Always. This is the extraordinary little aha I had. When we're talking to a vision killer, it's typically you don't have the money. You don't have the time. You don't have the people that you know.

Somehow or another, this is in your way. That's all in execution. It's not in vision. What we have to do is we have to arrest them a little bit. We have to enroll that vision killer. Now, I'm a lawyer. So, Chris, I'm a great vision killer. I mean, one of the best.

And so I had to learn how to do this. And, and, you know, and it came out in a public event of very much, you know, felt humility, humility, because my wife is a great visioner and she wanted to serve a million babies with her product. And, you know, and I was always telling her, Hey, protecting her like parents do to children. Hey, you know, we met and owner reached out there that hard, that far, that far, that fast, you fast. Let's be patient. These are all vision killer things. So the way that we can control the vision killer is a simple phrase. Anybody, it works every time.

You simply, when they say, hey, oh, you don't have the money. You simply say, that sounds like it's an execution. Play with me in vision for a minute. And I want you to use the word play play because it triggers in our mind oh you just want to play a little bit so the doer doesn't feel like they have to immediately figure out how oh it really works it really is stunningly effective i know because i had to do it on my own i had to to do it for me. So I know it works. And there, there is a lot of vision killers, you know, entrepreneurs run into those a lot because usually they have this vision of,

Hey, I want to start a company. And I think I've got a product here that works and people like, Oh, you know, most businesses fail. Oh, you know, you run out of money. Oh, you know, what if, uh, what if you try and it fails and then you're just you waste all this time and maybe you quit your day job and you know and then you know you're gonna look foolish and everyone's gonna go there's that guy who failed eh um and you know so identifying the vision killers are really important maybe you have people in your office you know when you set up a vision they're just like yeah this isn't gonna work we're not gonna play with it a little bit but we're just gonna we're

just gonna kind of appease the boss but we we really don't care this isn't gonna achieve anything um those are people you gotta watch out for as well you do and in fact i address that specifically in the book because that's a common that, right? It's getting people enrolled in the vision. And the key component, I think, is I don't want to be involved in somebody else's vision. I want to be involved in a vision that maybe I have a part of too. That's why I keep pressing on this idea of collaboration. This is the enrollment function of a vision killer. The vision killer wants to protect you. That's your COO.

They said, listen, you know, Mr. Visionary, don't get too far ahead of yourself, right? Because we got to practically implement this. The COO tells you that they're killing your vision. You know what visionary CEOs often tell me is, I can't get anybody to hear me. I want to get these things done and nobody executes on it. Wow. And you know what the doer says, the doer CEO says, I'm stuck. I mean, I've made about as much efficiency as I can. I can't think of anything new to do. We both need, both sides of that need to start communicating in the level of a new way, a way to create that vision that sets aside our preconceived notions of how we're going to do

business and starts that integral part of getting them a part of it. So what happens is we put a team together and we have that meeting. We have that really uncomfortable meeting where it's like, oh yeah, I'm going to do what the boss says I got to do, but I don't really believe in it. And you just say it. I bet you all are thinking, I'm just going to do what, you know, the boss says to do just to do it, but we're going to put this in the drawer. How do we make it different?

How do we make it personal to you? How do we collaborate on this vision in such a way that it becomes a part of you? Boom, it opens up and suddenly there's all this excitement and then it builds. And then they're your biggest advocates and ambassadors. And once you do that, things start sailing really, really quickly. That's how some of my clients doubled and tripled their revenue. As you

mentioned earlier, it's been incredible. And I'm not talking about 200 to 400,000. I'm talking about like 5 million to 10 and $15 million. It just happens. And these were companies where they were flatlined. They could not grow. And that's really kind of the secret to setting goals and setting them way out there, having a vision that is exciting, is motivating, that people are like, hey, I want to be a part of this.

I want to go do this. I want to, you know, this person is going places and at companies where there have been visionary leaders like that, people are excited because, you know, that people search for leadership. People leave companies over leadership. Uh, if they have bad management, bad bosses, people who don't lead, you know, things are dead. And I think we've talked to recent shows about how Gen Z kind of wants more vision. They want to work someplace that's more compelling to them, that seems to serve a purpose and is purpose-based, as opposed to just like, I'm going to push papers from here to there. You talk about AI. Artificial intelligence will make your company obsolete if you don't have a vision.

What is that about? It's kind of interesting, isn't it? So AI is, I think it's fantastic. A lot of people are discounting it right now or frustrated with it. But I think it's a really, really great way for us to become even more efficient at what we do, right? So as a born doer, I can see so many relevant ways in which I can improve the way I do things, the speed with which I do things to get things done, right? That's AI.

AI can take what we do as a race, as a humanity, and do it faster, quicker, and better. And it's only going to get better and better and better and better as technology continues to improve. So where does that leave us? If your company is operating as a efficiency model and a computer can do it faster, quicker, better, where are you? You're going to go obsolete. It's going to be the person that has a vision of creating something that doesn't yet exist that is going to have the marketplace. They're going to own it exist that is going to have the marketplace.

They're going to own it. They're going to be a part of it. It's like, remember the old Star Trek movies, like, you know, before Steve Jobs, right? Spock, Spock, you know, beat me up Spock, right? All this crazy stuff that didn't exist. This is where we need to go back to. In vision, we need to start going back to the idea that we create from nothingness for 60 years. We've been in an improvement stage. How do we do it quicker, faster, better, more profitably, but we need to move back into that visionary space. And I'm not saying nobody does this, but the majority of business right now is on improving the customer relationship, customer service, the way in which we do it, how fast

we deliver it, et cetera. So kind of like instead of saying, I want my pizza in 30 minutes, which is no longer relevant, right? You're kind of like, well, do you really want a pizza? Or how about something new that you might have delivered to your house? Yeah. Have a pizza with pepperoni on it. Or I was going to do pineapple.

That's the original, right? Yeah, I was going for pineapple, but it's Friday. There you go, piss them off. I've lost half the time. Put you into Hawaiian mode with a Hawaiian pizza. Everybody knows pineapple is supposed to go on pizza. I don't know, that'll start some fights out there. But you're right. AI is something that's definitely pizza. I don't know. That'll start some fights out there. But you're right.

AI is something that's definitely going to make things move faster, tighter. It's creating a new whirlwind of stuff. And so having a vision to drive people to and get them to do. So if you're a CEO or an entrepreneur out there listening right now, what's the best tips or techniques to create a compelling vision and sit down and build one out? First, you already said it, and I think it's great. You summarized it perfectly. Find out why you're doing what you're doing now because there's a link in there as to why it is that it was important to you when you started.

It may not be clear to you now because years later, it's been frosted over, defrosted, frosted, defrosted. Who knows where you are in your process, right? But deep down inside, you started it for a reason. I started as a lawyer for a reason. I wanted to do something as a lawyer. And then after 35 years of being a great lawyer, a great trial lawyer, I can tell you that what I started out with wasn't quite what I was doing, right? Most of the time. I got my little bits and pieces, but most of the time I didn't. So when you identify why you began to do this and your why, then you continue to ask a little deeper question. Why is that important to me and why would it be

important to other people? That's the second step. Why is it important to other people? And I want you to think of a vision bigger than you and bigger than your client, bigger than your client, which is hard for CEOs to do. This is where they stumble. They go, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't care about elephants in Africa is what one CEO told me. And I said, you know what? That's not what we're talking about. But why would it be more important to you and to others? Because if others are interested, they'll start advocating even though you're not your client. And then you start collaborating. Now, I'm from a generation where it's my vision.

This is my vision. This is my vision. This is my goals. Join me in my goals. And we need to move away from that. The young generations now, they'll get on the phone and they'll put an idea out there and they'll have 500,000 people responding to their idea. Now, the difference between us and them is that they're very frustrated because many of them, I'm not saying all, but many of them see all this. They don't know what to do. They don't know the next step. They don't know how to execute on it. A

great idea. And so that just sits there, right? Well, we're great executors on ideas. And so therefore what we want is to build in the vision portion of this. And so collaborating with other people and getting them together then creates answers to the impossible. And then the third is to announce it to the world. Once you've got a vision that's attractive, you've got to get it out there in as many different ways as you can, which is exactly why I'm sitting here instead of enjoying a nice drink over here on my boat in the afternoon. There you go. You forgave the boat to be on the show. There you go.

That's some vision right there. It's a vision, baby. Sacrifice or commitment, one of the two. How flexible should your vision be or should it be? Does it need to be an adapting vision? Is there a point where you need to modify your vision? And how do you recognize that point of like, well, let's tweak this

vision a little bit maybe maybe making it bigger or smaller or realigning it you think if we're open about it we'll our our north star as one author wrote it will tell us whether we're getting away from our vision or not but i don't advocate necessarily that you hold it so closely that it has to be your vision. But I don't advocate that you move away from what it is you want to do. Steve Jobs would not have developed this if he had listened to everybody else, right? It would have been something different. And so the leader has to enroll them in this bigger vision. And that's part of that vision killer portion of it, because almost all of your vision challenges will be in execution. The reason that Steve Jobs

was so, so exalted for this is because he had a vision, despite everybody telling him he couldn't, they couldn't do it. Right. And then they got it with two buttons. He says, I want one button. You can't do one button. And then they gave gave him one button, right? So it was his clarity of insistence in the execution phase. So the vision is not the same as the execution. The vision doesn't have to be that compromised in order for you to have it. And it doesn't have to be achievable even in your lifetime. Ideally it would be, but it doesn't have to be. It may be a goal that's got more legs than you have lives. There you go. Well, I've used all my nine lives, so I'm out of lives. There you go. Do you have some stories of examples of six to eight figure CEOs that created visions that resulted in major revenue increases?

Yeah, sure. So one of them, nice guy, a painting contractor. So I use this one because there's a lot of contractors out there that get stuck, right? They can't grow. They can't get more business. This was a great example. His challenge was to keep people because whenever business was good in the whole community, then all of the other painters would steal his painters away for short term increased pay,

you know, and then his good workers would go away. And here has all this business. He didn't have any workers. He'd have to train new people. So the paradigm was why would you want to stay with one contractor other than just the typical, Hey, he pays me well, or even longevity. What he came up with was I really have a heart for them having not only just a place to earn their living, but I think they should be like a professional. They should be treated like a professional. When they become an experienced painter, then they're teaching young painters. They're doing some other things besides just sitting out and doing the cutout on the trim. And so he developed like an institution. And I can't tell you too much about it because he's my client.

He was my client. And I don't want to reveal the competitive advantage. But here's the reality of it. He created an institution and created a system by which these employees were really, really motivated. And they wanted to stay with him. And they wanted to stay with him and they wanted to grow with him. And soon he had so many employees that when the work came in, there was no problem. And then they started referring work into him. The employees started referring work into him

of family members and friends and others that never happened before. And so ultimately what ended up happening was he doubled his revenue and it was a substantial number. Wow. That's a great story. That is an awesome story, especially when you can. Let me give you a cool story, Chris. This is one that's really, it really, it's not answering to your question,

but I think it's a very powerful story. Let's do it. The story is of Nadia. So Nadia was born in Russia in the 90s. And historians will tell you that because of the collapse of, at that time, the Russian government, there was a lot of turmoil financially. And many of the people that lived in Russia were worried about how they were going to pay for things. And so there was a three-fold increase in babies given up for adoption. And at the same time, about half of the adoptions would occur that had been occurring before. So Nadia was born into this environment and it was very unlikely that she would be adopted.

Interestingly, she was also confined to a bedroom And it was called a bedroom because you were confined to your bed. And the reason for that was because she was born with no bones in her feet or her lower limbs. Oh, no. The probability of her being adopted and having a wonderful life, et cetera, and so forth, was pretty difficult to see. Impossible, some people would say. This is the word that we're attaching. This is the word that we're attaching. This is the word that

we're attacking. This is the word we're changing. It's not impossible when we start a vision. As it turned out, she was adopted by a family in Baltimore, a wonderful family. They had two other healthy, normal children. And so she grew up a normal child. And that's a great story in and of itself. But when she jumped into the pool, she became an amazing swimmer. And I'm not talking about with prosthetics. I'm talking about no prosthetics because ultimately they amputated her legs just below the knee and she would wear prosthetics to walk around. But when she was in the pool, it was just her. And she became faster and faster and faster and of course won the para olympics at 17 years old she was probably in the top two to three percent of swimmers in the world holy crap for speed incredible story

and in a i think it was abc i better be right on that they'll probably chase me down with oh let them some sort of spy bots or something. But anyway, whoever was interviewing her asked her, well, so, you know, what are you thinking? And she says, you know, I used to swim to show people that I could do it. She said, my mindset has changed. I now swim to show other people that they can do it. That's not a new theme, but it's a very cool theme, right? It's what we really admire in people when they're doing something that's bigger than them, right? They're contributing back. Now, I want the CEOs, the visionaries, the people in this, in listening to this podcast to think about this for a second, just one second.

Imagine if she had made that declaration when she was 11, when she started swimming. Imagine the crew that would have wanted to follow her journey from year to year to year and broadcast it, the audience she would receive, the impact she would have had on the world, the way in which her ups and downs, her trials and her tribulations would have been exalted as wonderful. That is vision. That's the story. That's what you want to do in your business. You want to have that moment where you're saying, listen, if right now, here, now, this is when we're going to do it. We're going to start doing it now, not after we've seen that it can be done. And so therefore we're going to brag about it. Yeah. Vision inspires people. And when you inspire people, you get exemplary

results out of them. You take things to the next level. There's, there's things that people do. They'll stay later. They'll work harder. They'll work smarter. They'll come up with innovations. You, you really you really um and sometimes setting it like a goal out there where it seems a little too unachievable where it's like i don't know if we can make this helps get people to stretch and and go to the next level and uh uh it just makes all the difference when people are inspired and when they're not they you know there's no vision they're just dead inside they're just, there's no vision. They're just dead inside. They're just like, what are we doing? We're just pushing papers back and forth on the desk here and waiting for 5 o'clock to click to check.

You said something, and it triggered for me. I do that a lot with people, actually. That's cool. When we can't see a goal, it's moving toward a vision. Yeah. If we can see how to do it right now, I'd tell you if I was mentoring you, I'd be saying, okay, so let's pick something bigger. Yeah. Go bigger yet.

And another success story was a woman who has a firm, and she does really good work for people. And I irritated her because every job. You triggered her? We got to go bigger. We got to go bigger. And then about three months ago, two months ago, she was telling a whole crowd of people that it was because I kept telling her to go bigger, that she's standing before them. And she's in front of 800 people delivering this amazing presentation. And these were not people that she served these

were the people that were going to go out and serve others so it was that huge of a vision it was very cool that is awesome so uh let me ask you this there was one other question you had uh there was uh um what what about uh creating visions with this new sort of social justice themes that are really popular do you do you have to have visions that you know like hey we're trying to make a lot of money and save the whales at the same time or something you know it is do you really have to do those social justice sort of themes inclusions now or i don't know do they there's there's a place for them um i truly would like to see vision i i'm i'm working in the silo of CEOs. And the

only reason I'm doing that right now is because it's the one I'm the most familiar with. But I see this implication in so many different areas of our lives. I believe right now, as a country, we are lacking visionary leadership right now. As a world, we seem to be struggling with leadership. We have a lot of divisiveness instead of leadership, instead of vision, instead of something that people are saying, hey, I want to support that. I want to grow to that. It's almost like, no, I don't want to be there. So therefore, I'm going to be over here. And if you're not leading, you're following is the saying, right? The idea of a social cause as a vision is a terrific one. I think that needs to be done. Does it have to be for business? No. I gave you an example of that.

I'd say that 90%, 95, 90, 95% of the visionaries that I worked with, and there's got to be over 100 CEOs now, probably 90% of them had no vision that was related to social justice. That's not what's necessary. If it is, and you really are attached to it, and it is directly relevant to your company, and people are feeling connected to it, then of course course you should be doing that. Tom's Shoes is an example of that where, hey, nobody should be without feet and without shoes, right? So you buy a pair, we're going to give a pair. Yeah. Those are some great ways. People love that stuff too. They really buy into it. Because we believe in it. I don't want people to suffer. A good friend of mine, no child should be without clean drinking water i said you're absolutely right on that i didn't help him form that vision he found it through the unordained

you know zap on the top of his head yeah that's a funny little i don't i don't think he'd mind my telling him it's wells for life and he said he was over there in in uganda i think it was and you know he's he he said god told him, you've sold enough real estate. Now it's time for you to help some people. And so he converted his whole life into this vision of drilling wells for people in Uganda so that the children could have water for 50, 60, 70 years at eight grand, seven grand, some small amount of money. That's really amazing, man., some small amount of money. That's really amazing, man. And that's, I mean, that's extraordinary.

So there you go. And he, he's such a fun guy. And yeah, if your listeners are interested in supporting that kind of a thing, you know, tell them that Chris, Chris Voss sent you. Tell them Chris Voss sent you. That's the way you do things around here. There you go. They listen to Chris Voss, you know, sent the way you do things around here. There you go. They'd listen to Chris Voss you know, sent you more than Jim Bolita.

So there you go. Well, you know, I'm sure they'll follow your lead there. So give us your final pitch out on the book and where people can find it, etc, etc. I think I'm going to end with the Vision Killer story because I think this is

where we play almost all of us and it'll relate to you. My wife told me she wanted to go to this event. It was a CEO event for improving your business. And I've been to a bunch of them, right? And when she told me, no, I don't want to go. She said, oh, please, I want to go. I want you to support me. It's three days, et cetera.

That night, Chris, she was sitting at the dinner table. We're very involved parents. We have three children. They were going to all the things that children, that kids do. Every weekend was occupied. I could swear when she told our kids at the dinner table that we were going to go to this event and grandma was going to take care of those kids for three days. I could swear she looked over at me and she gave me a little wink. And I interpreted that to mean that what we were going to do is we're going to go down there. We're going to go for a couple hours, right? And then we could go to the, it was in San Diego. We could go to the

Coronado del Hotel and have a little drink on that same. Oh, I see. Spend our weekend together. Well, it turned out to be, no, she was enthralled in this thing. We stayed through cocktail hours and three days of this. You bought it. So she joined the organization.

I did. We both improved. I got great information out of it. We both improved our business. No question about it. Six months later, she said, I want to go

again i fooled me once not twice i called all my buddies i said okay we're gonna play golf at one o'clock every day for three days down in san diego some of the best courses in the world let's go down there and play so i set it all up for us and when we got there to the event she insisted on sitting in the very front table, right in front of the stage. And I'm like, how am I going to get out of this? How am I going to step away from this at 12 o'clock? At any rate, she's great individually and with small groups, but she never gets up to the microphone. And we had these people, Alison Maslin, it was a pinnacle event. And Allison was on the stage, and she was talking about vision and asking people for their ideas on strategic vision and vision.

And suddenly, while somebody was up at the microphone pouring their heart out, my wife stands up and starts to walk to the back of the room, and I thought, how rude to go to the bathroom at this moment. And to my surprise, I turned around to watch her. And as she was walking back, she made an immediate right turn and stood up behind the person at the microphone. And I thought, Ooh, this is going to be interesting.

And so when she got up to the microphone, you're a little rest, red chested right here, a little nervous, you know, full of emotion. She says for the first time in my life, I feel supported in my vision.

And her vision was to serve over a million babies. And I felt a stab in my heart, Chris. This is my best friend. This is my wife. This is the person I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be that person that no matter what is supporting her. Later, she comes back, and I'm trying to make it about her and make sure she's all proud and happy.

But inside, I'm in turmoil, right? Allison says, okay, pull out a piece of paper. And now you're all going to write on this form of your vision. I wrote down, be the best lawyer for my clients. I was done. Everybody else is feverishly writing around at the table. My table. There's 400 people in there.

I look around the room, everybody's writing, but me. At that moment, I realized not only was I killing my wife's vision, but I was killing my own. I had other dreams, other expectations, other things I wanted to do. I wanted to own more companies. I did not want to be tied to the lawyer's desk. I wanted to expand my vision of who I was and what I did. And so I, I right then and there committed that I was going to make a change. And I did. And that started me on the discovery of how to control the vision killer in me. And then when I learned how to do that and started to practice it, I invited other CEOs that I knew, Hey, do you want to see this? You

want to try it? You want it? You, you want what's working for me? Yes, I do, hey, do you want to see this? Do you want to try it? Do you want what's working for me? Yes, I do. Next thing you know, I'm mentoring CEOs. And that's how I've gotten to where I am now, which has forced me to write this book, because it needs to be out there, and which I believe is just going to be the start. It's only the start of a conversation about instead of it finding my why, it's a next level up. Okay, what's our why? Why are we doing this together? And how do we want to do it together in order for us to achieve things we cannot even see we could do right now?

Create things that we do not see how we're going to do. That's how I'll leave it. There you go. Find a book at visionmakerbook.com. If you sign up for it, I'm not doing pre-sale right now. So if you sign up for the book, I'll notify you by an email when the book is getting ready to launch. And I'll let you know and you can get it. And otherwise, if you go to vision-maker.net, you can book a 15-minute call with me and I'll talk with you for free. I talk with anybody, anybody about vision. I love talking about vision. It's now my passion. I've just, I've gone ahead and retired all my clients to other people. I'm just talking about vision now. Amazingly, what I'm finding is a lot of problems to business owners are solved by vision.

There you go. And you've given us a spectacular vision. Thank you very much, Jim. We really appreciate it. I appreciate you hearing me out and being a part of this and making it fun. There you go. Order it up, folks. Get available on the pre-sale too. VisionMaker, your vision made easy.

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