The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Identify and Seize Windows of Opportunity to Thrive in Times of Change

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Brian Biro is a professional leadership speaker, coach, and best-selling author who has delivered more than 1,400 presentations around the world. His clients include Lockheed Martin, the US Army, Microsoft, the University of Notre Dame, senators and representatives from thirteen western states, and hundreds more. He was also rated the #1 speaker at four consecutive INC. Magazine International Business Conferences. In this episode, we talked about leadership, possibility thinking, team-building...

ultimately the biggest factor is energy. And energy is a choice. It's something I really want people to understand. Your energy is your choice. Most people think of their energy, Tommy, like they think of the weather. It's like, gee, I hope the weather's good for the family picnic.

Hope I have enough energy to make it through this long day. But your energy isn't like the weather. Your energy is a matter of choice based upon the way that you move and your focus on purpose. You take charge of those two elements, you're going to see your energy start to rise. And everyone you touch, your energy is your example.

And the third controllable is to build people, build teams, and build relationships. In the home service industry, every industry is ultimately, never forget, it's the people industry. It's the relationships you build. It's the way you grow and change and adapt. It's the relationships you build. It's the way you grow and change and adapt. It's the way you help others do the same that's going to determine how you're differentiated,

how successful you are, and most of all, how much fun you have getting there. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Today, I got a guest visiting us from Asheville, North Carolina, where I've been before. It's a great spot to live. His name is Brian Biro. And did I say it right? You did it, man. I knew it. Way to go. All right. So you're an expert in leadership, possibility thinking, thriving on change, and team building. Brian Biro Enterprises, LLC,

the owner and professional speaker and author from 1990 to present lyndon air freight was a ways back and then class aquatics which was uh way back even before then so you're a professional leadership coach author and and personal coach brian byro is known as america's breakthrough coach he's a best-selling author who's delivered more than 1,800 presentations around the world in the past 30 years. His clients include such diverse organizations such as Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army and Microsoft. The author of 15 books, including his bestseller, Beyond Success, and his brand new The ROI of Kindness. Brian was rated number one from over 40 speakers in four consecutive Inc.

Magazines International Conference and was honored as one of the top 10 interactive keynote speakers in North America and one of the top 60 motivational speakers in the world. Quite the honor to have you on today, sir. Well, honor is likewise. I love the opportunity to affect people and you've got a great show and do a great job so i'm pumped awesome so tell the listeners a little bit about you tell them how you got into coaching and and just business and then kind of what the next couple decades i should say have in store for you but uh amazing time far. So I can't wait to hear about it. Well, you know, I think the foundation, Tommy, is that I've always believed in people.

I love people. I believe that we have more in us than we think. My mentor was the greatest coach of all time, John Wooden. John Wooden wrote the foreword to my first book, Beyond Success. And John Wooden often said, there are no overachievers. Many of us said, oh, you're an overachiever. No, you have more inachiever. No, you have more in you than you ever dreamed of. My first career was as a United States swimming coach. I had the opportunity to work with young athletes to rise towards their potential.

I realized from doing that, you don't really coach swimming, you coach people. It's really about helping them break through their fears, their habits that don't serve them. That's really what I ended up doing in the next career, which was the corporate world and ended up becoming a vice president of a pretty large transportation company. And I found that what I learned there was how important it is to break through silos. And we have that separation between operations and sales in the home office, the different functional groups. And when we break through that, we have a chance to really, really do something spectacular that will come over to our customers. And now for 30 years, I've been doing this work as a speaker and an author that

I love more than anything else because I've had the chance to speak in front of almost a million people. But that core of believing that we have choices about how we respond to everything. We may not control what happens, but we have control about what we respond to everything. We may not control what happens, but we have a control about what we do with what happens and that we can make better choices, that we can live richer lives. We can absolutely positively understand that every one of us is a leader. And when we come from that place, in other words, how do you show up every day? That's leadership. How do you deal with challenge and change like we've all had to through pandemic? Big part of your leadership. Most important of all, what kind of impact do

you have on people? Do you lift them up just by who you are? So we're all leaders, but my goal and my passion is to help people recognize that breakthrough leadership, which is about controlling your controllables, is what really can determine what kind of life you have, what kind of success you have, and how you enjoy the journey. I love it. There's a lot here. I mean, you've got a lot of life experience as far as your careers. I'm old, Tommy. That's a nice way of putting it.

Yeah, I'm old. Okay. Well, it just seems that you spoke to, what did you say, a million people? Close to a million people now. Well, first of all, I think there's a lot going on right now. You know, I'm just curious. I'm going to be selfish because I get to ask the questions and there's a lot of great questions I have noted here, but the world is just something's up. I was just talking to one of my bankers and I'm like, I'm trying to work on getting my data house

right now. And I put in an offer for $40,000 over asking price. They had 33 offers. I didn't get the house. I just watched this very good documentary on China, especially Beijing, and basically how they're better capitalists than us now. There's more millionaires being made every day. Their technology has moved beyond ours. They're eating our lunch.

I talked to three HVAC companies that said they've never been profitable December, January, or February, and all three of them were profitable. I'm looking, I had a vodka tonic a couple of weeks ago at a bar. It was $17. I just, it seems like something's up and I don't know what it is, but I know that the hospitality, you know, the hotels, the movie theaters, the bars, the restaurants, everybody's hurting and then home service is doing well, but I just feel like something's not right. And I don't, it could be a really, really good thing, but I'd love to hear your perspective just right now. What's going on. Well, it's a really fascinating question and I wish I knew the answer, but I can give you a personal look at that. As I said, I've been a professional speaker for 30 years.

Well, last March before pandemic, I had 80 events booked for the rest of the year. That's a lot of bookings. By March 20th, I had zero events booked. Every live event was canceled in 2020 for me, every single live event. So suddenly something weird is going on. I got a whole new world. So we've all experienced something different because none of us have ever experienced what we've experienced over the last year, as far as pandemic. And as far as some of that, all the things that go into that, when most of that is uncertainty. And I think that's what

you're seeing in terms of the houses by people are uncertain. So they're trying to jump now. I think the people are in a place of having been dealt something we didn't know what to deal with. And so we're very short term oriented and there's a lot of fear. And so when I talk about breakthrough, I'm talking about those. There's one straight break that you break through from fear to love and faith. And that's a long term perspective. And so what I think really matters right now, because of what you said, all the changes going on in our world, the acceleration of technology,

we could spend a whole talk about that. You think about what we're doing now compared to five years ago. And two years from now, we'll have technologies we have no idea we're going to be doing right now just because of artificial intelligence. What we need to do is focus on what we can control. And that is three areas. Shape your future. In other words, whether you like it or not, what you focus on is what you create. So when you focus more on what you want to create, you move towards that end. You can't use your memory to see anymore. Everyone watching this show, I'm going to ask them a funny question. It may seem like a silly question at first, but answer out loud wherever you are and there'll be a point to it. Let's see. I'm going to ask a vision question. What color is a yield sign? And I hear thousands of people

answering the same way and they're saying yellow. Well, yield signs are red and white. They're upside down triangles, red and white. I've asked it to thousands and thousands and thousands of people in my audience. They always say yellow. Why? We've seen thousands of yield signs and we haven't seen one of them for what's in front of us. Why? Because very rarely do people use their vision to see. Instead, what we use is our memory to see, our memory and our conditioning. And so what we need to do is to recognize that we can control what we focus on more often. If we start to focus on the fear, we can shift to what do I really want? We got to really change the way we look at people. Change the way you look at people,

the people you look at change. So step one in dealing with this craziness of now is to start to shape your future. If you don't, somebody else will shape it for you and you don't want that. Number two is to energize and engage your team. Every single performance level, ultimately the biggest factor is energy. And energy is a choice. That's something I really want people to understand. Your energy is your choice. Most people think of their energy, Tommy, like they think of the weather. It's like, gee, I hope the weather is good for the family picnic. Hope I have enough energy to make it through this long day. But your energy isn't like the weather. Your energy is a matter of choice based upon the way that you move and your focus on purpose.

You take charge of those two elements, you're going to see your energy start to rise. And to everyone you touch, your energy is your example. And the third controllable is to build people, build teams, and build relationships. In the home service industry, every industry is ultimately, never forget, it's the people industry. It's the relationships you build. It's the way you grow and change and adapt. It's the way you help others do the same. That's going to determine how you're differentiated, how successful you are, and most of all, how successful you are, and most

of all, how much fun you have getting there. I love it. You said the three things there is your future, the energy, and engaging the team, and then building your people, your relationships. I just had about 10 people tour my facility today, and I get this all the time, and I love doing it. And they said, how are you finding people right now? Because right now there's either usually people ask one of two questions in business. How do I get more business? How do I get more leads? Or how do I get more great employees? And it's really, I think what I learned during the pandemic and COVID is I focus way more on the people and the employees than I do about the customers and the clients. Because if you get the right employees, the clients come.

But they asked me, they said, right now it's tough because just, for example, in Portland, I was just talking to a guy today and he said, the unemployment rate is $22.50 an hour is what they're paying people unemployed. And I said, that's tough. That's a tough one. Because if you go to that rate, you got to raise your prices to, in order to be profitable because nobody's in business to not be profitable. But I'd love to hear your take on right now. There's, there's a shortage of people. That's for sure. Everybody's looking for employees. There's a shortage of supply chain. There's a shortage of everything. What do you say to somebody that says, hey, and I get this question a lot and I have my own theories and it's really about culture, leadership, and always be searching for people instead of always be closing. I say always be

recruiting. I mean, if I'm at a restaurant, I'm looking at the bus boy, I'm looking at the server. If I'm getting a haircut, I'm trying to recruit that person cutting my hair. But what's your take on it? Well, I think you're absolutely on the right track. First thing I would do is ask, we're kind of going from the opposite side. What is the number one reason why good employees leave an organization? And studies have given us the answer over time. It's never money. They don't feel appreciated. They don't feel appreciated or they don't get along with somebody they need to interact with a lot.

So it's about people issues. It's not about money or benefits. The state we're in right now is a recovery. So one other perspective, step back, is not going to stay this way. We're starting to move out of this thing and it's going to take some adjustment. So a little bit of perspective about that is important. But what you said is the key. And that is focus on creating the best organization that you can, on creating an environment where your employees feel and people pick it up right away that they

love working there, that they feel like they're appreciated. They feel like they're trained well, so they know what to do. Because a lot of times the challenge isn't that they don't they're appreciated. They feel like they're trained well, so they know what to do because a lot of times the challenge isn't that they don't want to learn. They just don't feel like they know what to do. And when we know what to do, we start to build confidence. We start to have a better attitude, really be a humble leader. Humility does not mean that you can't be confident because being humble doesn't mean you think less of yourself. It just means you think of yourself less. But as a humble leader, that means you're always open to learning to get better. And you know, only those who are humble are lifelong learners, because they're always thinking I can get better. So create a culture that's fun, that really seeks to serve, because

service is love and action, and it's fun. Be the kind of leader who gives credit and takes responsibility. It's amazing what's accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit. As a leader, credit is something you give. Responsibility is something you take. And here's the bottom line. You can't do anything about 2250 unemployment right now. It's going to come back into balance. We're not going to stay there. I really believe that. What you can do is everything we just talked about. Make your employees right now feel so good about how great it is to work there. Be straight with them. Be a humble leader who's always looking to give genuine recognition, acknowledgement, appreciation. And that in turn is going to flow through a more inspired, a more upbeat, a better attitude

workforce that's going to come through to the customers. And we start to create an upward spiral. So those are the elements that you can control. And by just doing that, by just focusing on those things, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's going to be tough to get people right now. But you put yourself in motion rather than sitting back going, hey, it's not fair. It's not working. And as soon as you start to take that action, man, you start to feel more alive, more confident, and you start to create an environment, a culture. Culture eats strategy

for breakfast. So start with building a great culture. You know, I told these guys today, I'm going to do it with my arms, but this is how I want my employees to grow. Something like this. And this is how I want my business to grow. It's a different shift because we're relying a lot more on technology. You could book now online directly into my capacity board. So I'm not saying I want to make employees obsolete, but I think it's the more we can shift. You've talked about artificial intelligence and different things of that nature to not that I don't want employees, but I will

tell you that if my accounting team could be 10 people instead of a hundred, I'll be more successful. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. Definitely. And the key is whether you have a hundred or 10, let's really get focused on how we can get them to be a team, to be inspired, to be focused, to be well-trained, to feel appreciated. And when they feel like that, whether it's 10 or it's 100, guess what? They're going to produce the greatest results. And you're going to have a blast along the way. I'll give you a really cool example. When I was in the transportation business, our market was Alaska. We were the biggest freight forwarder between the lower 48 states and Alaska. So we were completely tied

into the oil industry. Well, at one time, it's kind of like an oil pandemic, if you will. The price of oil plummeted, construction stopped, and everybody in our organization had the same response. It's the market. We can't do anything about it. My background as a coach before that, an athletic coach, said, you know, whether it's the market or not, I don't think that's where we need to focus. We need to focus on us. And here's the truth. Operations hate sales.

Sales hates operations. They just hate the home office a little more. That's what's killing us. It's not the market. And so we started to do some unique things. We started to focus on building bridges instead of walls to break those silos down. We started to do a team building that really brought everyone together. In one year, we turned around to become way more successful than we ever had been. We added about 400 jobs because we entered markets we never entered before, and that was sustainable. And so it was focusing on what we

put in and then good things will come out. 27 years at UCLA, the greatest basketball coach of all time, my friend, John Wooden, never said the words winning or losing to his players. He never said the words. Now, did his players. He never said the words. Now, did he want to win? Oh, yeah. But what he wanted was for everyone on that team to focus on their effort, their energy, their attitude. And then he'd wink at you and say, you do that,

you're going to tend to come out real well. And if we do that right now, we'll get through this storm and we'll be in a position because we focused on those controllables when it's done to be way higher than those that are focusing on the stuff they don't control. You talk a lot about coaching and you've done a lot with coaching. And I just got done telling this group today, I said, we're coaches, believe it or not, our job is to coach. And I said, you know, here's one thing that I take very seriously when I coach people is I have a niece and two nephews. And one thing is I haven't been as around as I should be overall, but you know, they're in Milwaukee and I love those kids more than anything. And I can tell you when they're

kids and I'm helping them do homework, for instance, I literally want them to be better than me. I want to train them in a way that they'll learn, that they know what's expected of them, and they're going to be better than me. I want to teach them how to ride a bike. And when they learn how to ride a bike and you take off those training wheels,

they're going to have elbow pads and knee pads and a helmet. But hopefully, they fall a couple times, they get back up, and they become a better rider than me. I can carry them on the back of my bike forever. But I got to be patient. And I got to make sure they understand it because I truly do want them to be better.

And I think that that's what coaches want. And another thing I say is every single person, Tom Brady, even when the coach calls the play, we got to call the play every time. Tom Brady, when he's winning, still wants the coach to call the play. He doesn't say we're winning the walk away coach. And I think sometimes we've got great performers that want to be coached still. They want to better their best. And I always talk about this because I think a lot of times what we do as leaders is we talk to the community and we say, you guys don't forget, you can't close out jobs like this or whatever. And I feel like there needs to be way more one-on-one coaching in most establishments.

There's not enough of that where you're working on the individual level instead of the group level. And, you know, I'm working on this really nice dashboards for myself and just the executive team. And the one thing I told my developer, I said, I don't care what it does

as long as it shows me what I need to coach on in real time. Like when that dog is pooping, I want to be able to find it and see it. And then when he's doing something good, I need to be able to see it in real time. So I want to be able to text message directly out from there. So you've had all this experience coaching. I just want to hear, this is like pure gold for me is just what are some of the things you've learned about coaching some of these companies that you've worked with? I want to really acknowledge a couple of things that you said, because the foundation was the mentality that you just spoke about, which is coaching is to help people reach their potential and you want

them to go as far as they can. And that means you don't want them to just kind of rise almost to your level. We want them to get way beyond that level. And that mentality is a coaching mentality. I also want to, when you talk about Brady, coming back to something we talked about a minute ago, it's not taught, but being a great coach, being a great leader, being a great teacher, being a great parent, one of the keys is to be humble. Tom Brady is the GOAT. Most people would say that. I was a big Peyton Manning fan, but I've got to tell you, I love Tom Brady too. And he is the GOAT. He's incredibly humble. He's always trying to get better. That's what humility is. He's always trying to learn. And that is at a core of coaching. But here's the other elements vital to coaching today. One is to be fully present.

When you're with somebody, the most important thing that we can communicate to anyone that we're working with as the leader of our business, as a teacher, as a parent, as a coach, what we're trying to communicate to them is that they're important, that we value them. Because when people feel important, they rise to an, oh yeah, spirit. And when people feel unimportant, they cause problems, they leave, they start to act out. And the only way that you can foundationally, truly deliver the message to every person that you interact with that they're important is to be fully present. And what that means is, when you're fully present, 100% of your mind, body, and spirit is with that person where they are now.

I'll say it again. When you're fully present, 100% of your mind, body, spirit is with that person where they are now. Now, how many of us have ever felt this? We want somebody to be present with us, but we notice that they're much more interested in looking at their cell phone or their eyes shift away. We know when somebody's present or not. And the second that they turn away from us, they've announced to us louder than words, you don't matter. You're not that important. This is more important. So be a great coach when you're with people, be fully there. Two, be what I call a world-class buddy thinker. And that's just a fun way of saying, understand how to deliver world-class recognition,

acknowledgement, and appreciation. And I'll give you a really fun and easy way to do that. And that is remember ESPN, all right? Kind of a sports guy. You look pretty dang athletic. I was an athletic coach. ESPN. So the E says, as a coach, when you deliver recognition, acknowledgement, appreciation, do it with energy and effort. The E says, thank people with effort and energy. You ever noticed Tommy, sometimes we acknowledge somebody, we just do it out of rote memory. We kind of go on, Hey, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Doesn't mean a thing. But when we just take that little extra energy and say, man, you are doing a phenomenal job. I don't think I've told you enough, but I really appreciate the extra effort. All I did was I was put a little more energy in the way I thanked them.

And it's a thousand times more effective. So the E-N-E-S-P-N, to be a world-class buddy thanker, acknowledgement, appreciation, recognition, thank people with effort and energy. But even more important, the E says thank people for effort and energy and not just their results. We have been conditioned to give praise only when the job is done, when the goal has been hit. And hear me loud and strong, keep doing that. You always want to reinforce and recognize great performance. But if you want to be a great coach, you want to be a great business leader, You'd be more cognizant to acknowledge people for their effort and energy before they get to the results. Why? How many people watching this

show have ever gone after some goal, worked harder than you've ever worked, did better than you've ever done, and you didn't reach the goal? Every hand is up. Because where do goals come from? We invent them. Their imagination, their vision. We make them up. So if you wait to only acknowledge people when they hit that imaginary new level, you're going to take people for granted. But when you focus on catch people for their effort, their energy, their attitude before they get to the results, guess what?

They'll produce more results because now they're focusing on what they put in to get to those results. So the E in ESPN acknowledge people for their effort and energy and with effort and energy. The S occasionally use the super glue of impact and that S stands for surprise. So next week, you got a guy on your team. His name is Jim. He opens up on Tuesday, a handwritten card that you wrote on Tuesday. He goes, handwritten, surprising. Wow. They took time. It's personal. I guess their computers ran. Just by writing a handwritten card, it's like, whoa, you catch their attention. The next thing they do is they go, hey, it's not my birthday. It's not my anniversary. I didn't just close a big deal. It's just Tuesday. And so by using a little bit of surprise, a handwritten card at an unexpected time,

the result is that guy is a thousand times more interested in opening up that card to find out what you had to say than all the emails that have piled up. And inside it says, hey, Jim, I just want you to know you are a great example for this team. You're always on time. You work your tail off. You're so good with the customers because you always are paying attention. You're present with them. And I'm not sure I've told you enough, but you are an example and a teacher for everyone on our team. Just want you to know the difference you're making. That guy will go, he'll keep that card more than any birthday card because it came with surprise. Do it with your kids too. Because when you surprise your kids, it stays with them. All the years my daughters were growing up, I wrote them letters four or

five times a year, sporadic times. I typed them out. I signed them. I put them in a stamp, a stamp on them. I mailed them. And on those days I stepped back and acknowledged them rather than for the stuff that they were doing when they were kind, when they were gracious, when they were courageous, when they were brave. And when my daughter was going away to college, we're cleaning out her room, mass hysteria, there's every one of the letters I sent her. And I realized my daughter couldn't look at her desk without refilling all those things that I'd written to her. So E, thank people with and for effort and energy. S, use the power of surprise. P, we talked about it, be fully present. And the N is do it now. I believe every day we're given a great gift in business and in life, and it comes in the metaphor or the form of a road in front of us. And several times a day, we get to the same why. One side

says as soon as, the other says now. As soon as looks easy. It's well lit. There's no ruts. Now it's kind of curvy, a few lights out. But if you take the road called as soon as, it's a direct road to never. Choose the now. So if there's people you need to acknowledge, do it now. If there's people you need to be more present with, do it now. If you need to elevate your energy, do it now. So ESPN is a phenomenal way to be a dynamite coach. Yeah, I think that I'm definitely one that say, I'll give you an example. I have a buddy of mine and I love this guy. He's one of my best friends of all time. And every week that went by was just and we're the type of guys that pick back up but he's a little critical sometimes and i just

every time i pick up the phone i'm like this could go an hour and it just longer and longer and longer the other day i called him he hasn't called me back yet i'll reach out to him again but it seems like sometimes i'm the type of guy that likes to be in real, like, I want to see you. I'm really not a phone guy. Text me or let's meet up in person. But hey, how are things? It's almost like you go through the motions and I'm just, I hate that. But also I was just watching something by, I think his name is Jocko. He wrote Extreme Ownership, I think. But he said, all of us say tomorrow or say just one more day or I'll start next month. And it's so true. There's no better time than now.

It's in the moment. Hitting the nail on the head on this stuff. But I love it. ESPN. And you're right. You know, my buddy, I picked up on this when I was a kid. But he always used to look people in the eye and said, he'd always say, thank you very much. Instead of just thank you, thank you very much. And he'd always nod his head. So now I do that. And it's just, it's real. It's like,

and people look at me differently when I say, oh, thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. It's a significant difference that you really can't fake because you got to be fully there to do it. And when you do it, it sends that message. I value you. You matter. You count. I really mean this. And that, that is a powerful piece. Let me give you one more. Yeah. Great question. There is the most destructive word in the language of teams and business. Cause you got to tackle the challenges in front of us. The most destructive word is the word B-L-A-M-E, blame. Blame kills teams. When blame is running rampant in your organization, everyone in that organization feels like the mole in that old game called whack-a-mole.

It's like, if I stick my head out, somebody's going to whack me on the head. Now, please hear me loud and strong. I'm not saying we don't mess up. We all do. We're human. But if you want to be a great coach, a great leader, a great teacher, then be what I call a blame buster. And here's why blame doesn't work. If you think about blame in the context of time, is blame about the past, the present, or the future? Past.

It's always about the past. So whenever you are in blame, where are you? In the past, the present, or the future? Past. It's always about the past. So whenever you are in blame, where are you? In the past. Can you do anything about the past? No, it's done. So what a blame buster does is simply this. It says, when people start to go in and get stuck in that mire of the past, they say, what happened?

What can we learn? What are we going to do now? It doesn't mean we didn't mess up. We're going to pay attention to how we can learn from that. And that's how you transform an organization by really creating an environment where people are not afraid to try the things that they think would work well. If it doesn't work, you don't get knocked down. You don't get whacked on the head like a whack-a-mole, but you learn from it. You move forward and you keep yourself stuck from being stuck in the path.

When you're in an organization building a team, be a blame buster. You know, I read the five dysfunctions of a team years and years ago, and I had my whole crew, the whole management team read it. And then I had a new guy start about just after COVID started. And he goes, I really feel like you guys are siloed. He goes, you're just growing so fast. And I really didn't know what that meant until I really started to think about it.

It's like we care so much about our team. We care so much about our direct reports, but we don't understand the good of the whole. And I think that that's definitely something that I've been trying to break through is to bring through is, is to bring more people, more of the heads together and just show how we all work together.

There's no winners or losers. If your team loses, I'm like this, everybody's not performance paid at this company for pretty much because I'm on performance pay. I said, it's only fair. We all should be, if we can, but you all should really do well. And if we don't, you know, the company doesn't do well, we're not, we may should be if we can but you all should really do well and if we don't you know the company isn't too well we're not we may not be in business so i definitely want to talk a little bit about when things start to get siloed and the good of the whole starts to become second instead of first how do you disrupt that communication obviously is the most important thing but what are some of the exercises in team building i'm sure you could do events and stuff like that, but what else are we missing?

I hit the nail on the head right off the start. And that is awareness is the first key. I have a real personal experience of this. As I said, in my transportation industry, we were so separated. How did that change? Well, the starting place was so simple. I was the vice president of marketing and sales. The vice president of operations was next door to me, but we were so different. I'm kind of more focused on possibility. He was somebody whose style was to focus on really examining what wasn't working. And so we were like, the only time we would be together was when we had to be in a meeting together. His office was literally next door to my office. One day when

I started to really get into this concept of being fully present, we just talked about and what the message was saying. I walked from my office next door and went into his office without an agenda. All I went in there was to be present. I didn't know anything about him other than he was VP of operations. We sat next to each other for a year and we just avoided each other. Now we pretended like we got along all well, pretty well. Obviously the organization could feel that siloing starting from the top. So I sent him to office and I started to look around and I saw pictures of his kids. At that time I was training for marathons. He was a long distance bicyclist.

I had never been in the room with the guy for more than two minutes on just one-on-one. An hour later, I left his room. And in that hour, we didn't change our styles, but we respected each other. From that point forward, we would never have a major sales or marketing meeting without operations present and vice versa. And we started rocking. Instead of looking for catching each other with blame, we started catching each other doing things right. So it starts by being present with each other. Another way is, as you said, a catalytic event can really make that change because here's the truth. Once you start paying attention, operations doesn't want to do sales and sales doesn't want to do operations. So we need to

respect that those different focuses make us a greater whole. But it starts by using these simple ideas, being fully present, being a world-class buddy thinker, stopping the blame busting and starting to build that sense that there is no win, lose in business. It's win or it's we all lose. All right. And so when you have that common goal, you can be unstoppable, respect and admire differences. I don't want a team of people who are just like me because then we only see the little bit that I see. I want people who have talents that I don't have, who have passions in areas that we need to be good in that I'm not that good at, and practice that powerful thing called humility. The great football coach, Paul Bear Bryant,

you'll love this quote. He said, I'm just an old country playoff hand. He said, but if I learned one thing, he said, if you want to get a team's heart to beat as one, when things go great, they did it. When things go pretty good, we did it. Things go bad, I did it. In other words, I'm going to give credit, take responsibility. And when I do that, that just gets everybody to start to feel the same sense of, man, that guy's in here with me. And when they're in there with me, we're going to move faster. Powerful stuff. I just had a manager that we didn't feel the same things about in the market. He was good. He just wasn't great. And he lost his passion and he got a little upset on the performance pace. So we gave him the opportunity to go work for someone else we saw eye to eye on that but in my meeting the other day i said guys i gotta tell you there was about 30 people in the meeting i said this will never ever happen again i said i let you guys all down by

letting a b player stay on that long that his mind wasn't in it and then i played a thing and this is neither near here nor there. It could have been from Biden, but it was from Trump. And it's not about political. But he said, you know what the worst person in a company is? It's a good employee because the great employees, they're moving things along and they're kicking ass for you. The bad employees get fired, but the good employee, they're never going far enough, but they're never on your radar. They're keeping you there, but you don't know it. There's nobody that you don't notice them.

You don't want to get rid of them, but you know, they're not taking you to the next level. And I said, that was my fault for keeping someone of that nature on. And it's up to me as a coach to bring them up or out. I always say, you got a will, I'll find a way. But if you lost the will, then there's no way I could do that for you. If you do not like this anymore, I can't give you back the passion. I can't give you back the why. So it just brings me to this point, too, is, you know, the back of a baseball card or a soccer, I mean, hockey or football card is they got the stats up.

Sure. And the batting averages. And as I love that, i love that data i live and die with data because it helps me train look if you're better at one thing i'm going to send you if you're the best of the 100 yard dash and you're playing the same position as someone else i should put you in that same position and let you do a ride along with that person to see how it's done and see it in real life so i I'm constantly thinking in real time, how to coach. And what we've been trying to do is find out how that batting average or those RBIs are going to help you win your personal game of life. Whether that be hunting or another

anniversary with your wife or getting your kids tuition or better insurance or purchasing your first truck, whatever that looks like. So from a coach perspective, we know what's good. We know the bad. And then there's a military way, nice shoes, nice hat, but put your belt on, right? And I just feel like for me, we go out to lunch. We have an experience. We're human beings.

I love you. We're going to sit down and I'm going to acknowledge you as a person first. Then we're going to talk about the good. And maybe some areas of, I don't want to say concern, but better your best. I always say, no matter if you're the top of everything, I still want to push you to the next level. But what is your take on kind of these concerns of,

we know what needs to be worked on. And although I'm excited about it and I'm passionate about it, we can't pretend, Hey, you got a D today, little Tommy. You did good. You tried. You get a participation trophy. I just can't do that. Well, you know, every year the Gallup poll people do a study. It's not political, but it's one that speaks to right what you're talking about. It's called the state of the American workforce. And what it does is it measures the level of engagement of American employees. Because as you know, as a business

leader, what you're going for is engagement. Engaged employees are way more productive to the bottom line, to the customer reception. They get more done better. So they move from that good to great. And there's tons of data that supports that belief that what happens is we need engaged employees. Well, every year for 15 years, Gallup's done this study. And I'm going to give you kind of the average of those years. And it always breaks into three distinct groups. The first group are the ones that you want to go the extra mile for every day.

They're called fully engaged and fully engaged employees have a mantra and their mantra is, oh yeah, whatever you throw at them. Oh yeah. You know, we're going to have to dig deep here because it's going to be tough for a while. Oh yeah. We got some new ideas and some new developments coming on. They're going to be great, but it could take some learning. Oh yeah. So of the hundred percent of total employees, now this is across all industries. So I want you to think about your own team. Everybody listen and think about your own team.

Think about companies you admire. What percentage? I'm taking a guess. Yeah, I want to guess. What percentage of the 100% of total employees would you say are, oh, yeah, healthcare? 12 to 20. What'd you say? Maybe 12 to 20%.

You're an optimist. I love that because almost always people say 5%. It's 24%. 24% has been the average for the last 15 years. The second group are the ones that could go either way. They're called the somewhat engaged. Now, as soon as I hear they're somewhat engaged, I go, well, that means they're also somewhat not engaged. And their mantra, and as a leader, you got to pay attention. They're telling you their mantra. Their mantra is, okay, things are going to be great around here. Okay. Things are going to be terrible around here. Okay. All right. What percentage would you say are just okay? Well, based on these, maybe 20, maybe 50%. 49%.

49% are just okay. And there's a third group, and some mathematicians have already figured out that's 27%. 27%. Yep. And that group are called the actively disengaged. Now, you wouldn't have them on your team because they're not B-plussers. They have a mantra, too, that you just cannot have in your organization. Their mantra is, oh, no, we got some great new plants. Oh no. But here's the part, Tommy, that is really important. If

you want to be a, that means 76% of American workers across all industries are either just okay or oh no. If you want to have an incredible team, you got to flip that upside down. There can be no oh no's and at least 75% or more, oh yeah. Because if you have 75% or oh yeah, they're going to bring that other 25% or just right now and okay, they have a better chance to bring them up. How do you do it? Number one, your own energy. Energy is what elevates on that scale. That energy really brings it up. Number two, you constantly are talking about constantly reinforcing great effort, energy, and attitude, things we talked about before. And so how do you really build a team that moves towards, oh yeah, because that's the differentiation. Guess what? There's somebody out

there providing the same basic services you do. What's the differentiation? It's their effort, their energy, their attitude. It's their more, oh yeah, than just okay. And so you got to build it from the foundation of starting with you. If it's to be, it's up to me. If things are going to change, I'm going to change. Be fully present. ESPN, World Class Buddy Thinkers, Blame Busting. And most of all, on a 10-point energy scale with one being comatose,

plan a child on Christmas morning, move your team closer to 10. When you do that, you're going to rock your industry and you're going to rock your team and you're going to have fun along the way. You know, Jack Welch is one of the people I think about who always wanted to leave from built to last. He talked, Jim Collins talks a lot about getting someone for succession planning that's better than me as a CEO. They're going to be better off. They're more equipped to this new generation. And then there's the opposite of that, that are like literally like when I leave, everybody's going to know.

I'm going to make sure this place fails without me. They can't do it without me, right? And I just think that Jack Welch also believed in the bottom 10 percent. You've got to have new heads coming in. You've got to show them the score, which is KPIs, key performance indicators. And make sure that they know that we're not going to accept second best. So I love the idea. You see, you're you said I'm an optimist. You're definitely one of the people that you try to see the best in everybody. There's there's no such thing as a bad person.

And I don't believe there's truly, I mean, there's some evil people out there in general, but for the most part, our employees are all, they want to do the best they could and with them what's in it for them. But do you believe in top grading? Do you believe in turnover? What is your take on that? Or do you believe we should literally coach

people and everybody's coachable and needs to be coached up? You should take a C player and work with them for a year if that's what it takes. That's a really tough question and a good question. I think, first of all, what we're talking about in coaching is called the Pygmalion effect. The Pygmalion effect is our thoughts, beliefs, and our expectations are magnetic. But as we look at people, we're not just seeing it, we're actually moving them, especially the greater influence we have in the direction of our thoughts and beliefs. So a real quick example, when I was a swimming coach, I had a young lady for eight years, great kid, but never a star. And I coached her with this Pygmalion impact. I said, one of said, she kept dying at the ends of her races.

She was a butterflyer. At the last 25 meters, she would tie up. She'd be in front and they'd pass her. I kept saying, one of these days, you're not going to die. That is a horrible Pygmalion because all she could think about was not dying, which is another way of saying dying. One day, I coached her differently. It was because she looked so good in warmups.

And I said, Alison, I want you to finish the last 25 meters exactly like you did that warmup sprint. She's so obliterated her personal best that I couldn't believe it was the same person. And I asked myself, was it her all those years that was holding her back or was it me? In a lot of ways, it was me because I had created a lower expectation. One thing I've heard from you in every example you've talked about is you hold a high expectation. So that is a great thing to be a positive Pygmalion. The second key before we just let people go is to make sure we're focusing on their strengths, looking to where they can be most successful. Many of us

have been taught and practice focusing so much on trying to change a weakness that we don't look at developing strengths. And as coaches, look for those strengths. And if somebody's in the wrong place, then before we let go, let's put them in a place where they can maximize that strength. So that's the second key. But finally, if they have an oh-no attitude, if we really feel they're taking the team down, then yes, there is a place for that kind of turnover because we're doing them a disservice. If they're in that specific place, they're not happy. And that's coming through as well.

So they would be better off with a new opportunity somewhere else. But start with your own attitude as a truly positive Pygmalion. It's a belief that everyone can get better. And I believe that deeply, that every one of us can make changes, that we're not destined to be exactly as we've always been. We can change. I've changed my life and I'm sure you've changed yours. Every one of us can change a belief and then look for people's strengths first, acknowledge those through ESPN. And yes, if that doesn't work, then it's time. I got a couple of questions from the audience. I just want to say one thing is when people ask me, how do you find good people? I say, well, have you ever heard of the military or high school sports? And they're like, oh, of course.

I'm like, when you turn 18, the military is coming into your high school. Literally, they're showing up everywhere you are. They know where their avatars are. They know where the 18-year-old, the 20-year-old kids are that they want to recruit. Same thing for baseball, football, soccer. But recruiters, they come out and they're measuring everything. They're seeing how fast you throw the ball. And they're actively in the right spots. I mean, so to me, a lot of people

think posting an ad on Craigslist or Indeed or Monster or any of these other places is recruiting and that's not. They're not actively seeking. To me, a recruiter is going to find somebody in a position and moving them over to your team. All that I'm saying is I handpick a lot of the people on our team and with a lot of, we've got three full-time recruiters, but I just feel like it's a big advantage we have is not to allow second, but like a lot of people say, when I hire this person, if they last for three months, I'll give an award out of $300 or whatever. I give up.

I just feel like you should give the money right up front because we choose the people we bring on and i do believe there's born winners i do believe you can coach somebody to win but i do believe there's people that are just naturally athletes there's people that are naturally really good at spelling or arithmetic or painting like for me i couldn't paint you give me a finger painting you might see like something i am not not good at painting. I couldn't paint, you know, like artistically. So, I mean, I know who I am and I hire around my weaknesses, but I just feel like I'm not the type of person that just could sit there

and say, no matter who we bring on, we're going to work with them because we're growing so fast that I need to make that 1%. You know, when you flip a coin, depending on if you start on heads or tails, you got a 1% more of getting that. And I want that 1%, that little 1% in my favor, whatever I do. So it seems like you seem to really believe that there, I think there's a spot to say, I mean, I don't want to tell a second grader, you suck. You lost today. You guys ruined it. And words matter too. I think words matter. You can't say, Hey words matter, too. I think words matter. You can't say, hey, listen, Brian, you deal with this bullshit with the hiring stuff.

Because if I say that, I got to make you feel really crappy if you're the recruiter. You know, words matter. But I just wanted to hear your take real quick. I think the key thing is that you've chosen those people. I'm talking about once you've already selected people, you made that decision that you see something in them. That you don't hire people, you don't see something in them. But once you've hired at them, you got it. Yeah. That's when you want to invest to make sure they're doing the thing that they can do best because then they're going to be and given the tools to do best and really focus on

their attitude. Example, my daughter right now just finished an advanced program in what's called user interface and user experience. So she's new. But what matters to the people who are looking to hire her is going to be her attitude. She hasn't got years and years of experience. She's smart. She's bright. But she comes in with an attitude that says, I'm going to bust my tail. I'm going to learn everything I can. Here's what I do well. She's got the best chance to move the farthest forward. And if that's what they're looking for, that kind of enthusiasm, focus, spirit, work ethic, and they hire on that and then she's been hired because of that. Then at that point in time, you've made that initial decision that this is a person I believe

could be an A player. Let's do all we can to help them be successful. You're right. Yeah, and I told these guys today, all these employees of this company of a buddy of mine, I said, guys, do you realize that you need a plan when you hire somebody? You need to give them the manual. I always talk about this, but in sixth and seventh and eighth grade,

Mr. Don, our gym teacher on Fridays would give us how to play the game. We'd get instructions and we had to learn how to play hockey, what offsides meant, what icing meant, you know, what we literally had to learn the game. And then he said, Hey, see that up there? That's the scoreboard. I'm going to teach you guys how to play volleyball, how to play soccer. And that's your KPIs. And I feel like, just like you said earlier, some people never get that manual that shows them how do I win and lose the game? What does tardiness do? What happens if I break down in my vehicle on the road? How do I deal with that? What happens if I need to change their insurance? And so we really learned on how to give people the fair chance when they

walk in to win the game and make them actively, you know, we disincentivize people with the performance pay. So basically we don't really have to fire a lot of people. They quit because they're not making good money. I mean, they really do. We have minimum wage. Like instead of giving a pay plus a bonus, we give you minimum wage or the bonus structure. And what that does is the great employees that kick butt and they want to learn and they'll stay after to learn things that they might be weaknesses. What happens with them is they make great money and all of a sudden a player flock to them and they go out and they're recruiters for us. And then the other people, when they're getting minimum wage, are like, no offense, guys, but I'm probably not cut out for this job. And that's great for us. So we don't have to do a lot of the firing. But Josh Yeager asks this question.

Do you develop the leadership team together or one-on-one? Both. You need to have both because there is a thing in a leadership team like any team, like a basketball team, there's a thing called chemistry. You need to make sure that each other is working. And John wouldn't use to put it this way. A basketball team is like, the metaphor he used was a car. Maybe the star is the engine, but that engine doesn't roll without wheels. And that wheel won't stay on without lug nuts. All right. So in a team, you got to do both. One-on-one is vitally important because that's where you can really demonstrate and really communicate to each person on your leadership team that they're valued,

that you listen to them, that they feel important. The team element as well, so that you get to share the different ideas and you build it together so that everybody feels a part of something bigger. So the answer is both. Okay. Another question from, looks like another Josh. So Josh has a landscaping business and he's curious about performance-based systems that he can implement to get more effort from the team so this is something that goes into siloing is that the effort you know there's a lot of things that that other players affect like look the quarterback can't throw a ball if the center is not doing his job which is hiking the ball and making sure he's blocking. And trust me, I was a left tackle, I was a left guard. I know all about making sure the quarterback's set up

for success, but you talk a lot about siloing. And the thing is, you can't win the game if everybody's not doing their job. So what's the best way to make sure the performance is lined up with the whole game for the team to win? You know, when I was in my transportation industry, the first thing I did coming in was create performance-based compensation programs. They never had it before. And what's their initial reaction when you bring something like that in? Oh, no, I'm going to lose. It's not going to work. The first and key thing is that the system allows people to be successful in the areas you want them to be successful. So you're running a landscaping business. You want to make sure your performance-based systems create the opportunity

for somebody to do what they need to do to make your overall team successful. And that's what gets rewarded. What happened when we did it was that initial fear turned into, wow, if I do better than I've ever done before, I can do way better than I ever thought I could. And that was one of the elements that shot us to the new heights height so make sure that designing your performance-based systems that they reward the right things and that they actually mesh so that you're not creating silos you're creating relays where everybody's running their leg of the relay and they hand the batons the right way yeah the first thing i'd recommend that i'd done is go on a whiteboard and write down what truly they have real things they control because i feel like

a lot of times you do performance pay and you look at it and you go wait a minute i can't say to the center like for example this i can't say that we throw a touchdown i can't i can't tell him hey dude you only make money this year if we get touchdowns he going well i'm just trying to make sure that the the balls hike properly and that no one's getting through my hole the i gotta protect both sides of my hole make sure no one comes in through it because that's what i consider success for the center correct and I think a lot of times people say they pick the wrong things and then they don't get the behavior they wanted. And you're right.

A lot of the mistakes that people end up not working for somebody and bad employees are really done through leadership. When you, when you think about this, Brian, I've seen second string quarterbacks go to teams and be all stars because they had a better coach or at least a better coach for that particular player. I mean, how often have you seen a person that was so, so they were great in college or high school, they go to college, then they go to

the pros and it takes the right team and the right coach and the right players and the right motivation for them to be excellent. Absolutely. You don't coach the sport, you coach people. That's what you really got to develop is help people. When people feel confident, focused, clear, and they control their controllables, they have the best chance to be the best they can be. So you got to make sure you reward those things and not something that they don't control

because then it doesn't really have any genuine application for the whole team moving forward let me ask you this real quick explain to me because there's there's all these critical positions in a company so you've got the ceo the coo so the chief executive officer the operations officer than the financial officer and my brother-in-law is a cio and he's involved a lot in the technology at general electric and he says the ceo is is basically he's given the hoorahs he's working on the vision and he's really like the team cheerleader he's handing out the trophies. He's checking in on everybody. The CFO is really, believe it or not, he's more like the COO these days.

He says they're constantly working on the financial decisions and the repercussions and the charts and to make sure that the budgets align accurately. were to explain these three positions in a company, CEO, COO, and CFO, how would you describe them and how they're all working towards the common good? Well, I think that every one of those three positions, one of the first things they need to get everyone on their team to believe is that each and every person on the team is a leader. Every one of us is a leader. What I mean by that is you're constantly teaching the people around you by the way that you show up. How do you deal with adversity, with challenge, with change? So the job of all three is to help the people that they lead and serve to know that they matter, that they're important, that they can make a difference. I would say the CEO's ultimate most important job is that he really is the chief culture officer.

He's trying to generate a culture that is sustainable, whether he's there or not, a culture that everyone can buy into, a simple formula that everyone in the organization knows, everyone in the organization ties into. Example, when I was running a real large training company, we created a culture based around this simple focus. We are champions of empowerment. We're delivering all these trainings all around North America. We are champions. Our job is to help our clients feel empowered to do a better job. My job as the boss was to constantly have my CFO and my coo and everyone on my team tie in to that common belief the cfo and the coo are i think the most important thing is that they really understand

that they're bringing those dimensions that they focus on towards that ultimate culture so they have to see themselves as a team. They have to really build within the entire organization. Everyone's important. Everybody matters. That salesperson who interacts with the potential client, to that client, that salesperson is the CEO in that moment. That person is the company. And so our job is to help everyone around us feel important, feel successful, to be a team, a good leadership team that supports each other and that constantly fights siloing. It's a constant battle.

I agree. That's the fun of it. That's the fun to get different people to recognize that we're a better whole when we bring different resources together. Differences are resources. It's a better word. Instead of saying we're having differences, we're bringing different resources together. Differences are resources. It's a better word. Instead of saying we're having differences, we're bringing different resources together. And that's how we can do things we've never done before. You know, when I study, I have personality profile, whether it's the disc assessment, I use what's called the predictive index. And I had this CEO

reach out and we had a long discussion. And basically what I learned is when he goes and works with private equity companies, huge private equity companies that buy sometimes billion dollar companies, he said they like taking the executive team and getting them through this process. And what they find is everything's kind of done on a quadrant. So there's a big box of four. And what they'll find is they'll find the executive team. Usually it looks something like this. And what he does is says, when we get somebody right here, your team's going to be so much stronger where that X is.

He goes, I'm trying to find the difference of personalities that you guys are missing. Maybe it's the sales side. Maybe it's the sales side. Maybe it's the visionary side. Maybe it's the C-type personality that wants to know the budget more. He said, you guys will make leaps and bounds when you get a well-versed leadership team that fits all the quadrants. And I think that's what you're trying to say is. Absolutely. Value and honor those differences if they're going towards a common goal.

You're going to get there faster. You're going to get there with everyone being more inspired and motivated to deliver their portion of the team. And everybody feels important. And they mesh. But it takes a leader to say, both of your perspectives have value here. Let's see how we can make them work together. I love it.

So if we want to reach out to you personally, ask some questions to you, what's the best way to get ahold of you, Brian? Simplest way is just my website, brianbyrow.com. And that's got information on my speaking. It's got a bunch of my books. You know, I love what I do, just like I can tell you do, Tommy. I love impacting people and helping people recognize that they can choose to be better leaders. They can choose to be better parents. They can choose better health. We don't have to do anything except die. Everything else is a matter of choice.

That's true. We just got to pay taxes, I guess. You know, you made me think of Steve Sims with blue fishing about how he writes personal letters to a lot of his people. And it just, it stands out so much. And it just made me think, cause I was looking at the ROI of kindness. Give me three books. We're talking about books. So two of your books will be on success is a huge one. And then the ROI of kindness was a new one, right? Tell me a little bit about that. And then maybe a few books that you'd recommend. Sure. Beyond Success, the foreword to the book was written by John Wooden.

We're still talking about him, even though he passed away 10 years ago. Greatest coach, left coaching in 1975, and we're still talking about him. So he was a remarkable guy. ROI of Kindness, we talked a lot about that kindness in a culture not only feels good, it creates bottom line results. If I was to recommend another book that I think that every leader should read, every person should read, it would be A Man's Search for Meaning. It's a simple book.

It's written by Viktor Frankl. He was, along with Sigmund Freud, one of the two biggest psychologists of the 20th century. And it's a book about what he learned from having gone through the Holocaust in a concentration camp. And it points out that life is ultimately about purpose, that the people who survived the Holocaust, it wasn't their physical strength. It was that they had a purpose left undone. They had a job they felt they had to do. They had a child they felt they had to take care of. That's what gave them life. In other words, truly, if you're not inspired, then you're going to be expired. And so that book has some really incredible

insights from, you know, many people right now have said this last year and a half have been toughest ever. Well, read that book and you'll understand that there's been even tougher times in life and we can make our way through it and be better for it. I'm buying it right now because my dad just went through some serious stuff with COVID as I'm sure. So yeah, so anyway, my dad went through all this stuff and I just feel like certain times, he's not a guy that gives up, but there's certain times where he's golfing three four months ago and now all of a sudden sometimes i need to help him you know get up or go to the bath you know not really in the bathroom but it's just sometimes he's going through this so it sounds like the why is so much got to be greater so that's a good book do you got anything else you

think the audience would get a lot from i think think some classics. The 212th Degree is a really fun little book because it points out that sometimes we think we have to make this huge change, but the metaphor of 212th Degree is, at 211 degrees, you got hot water. At 212 degrees, water boils, you can move a steam train. You can move the world. So sometimes inch by inch, anything's essential. A little change can make a magnificent difference. And that's a really fun, quick read book. The 212th Degree, I would recommend it highly. All right. And then this is what I do at the end of everything. I really, first of all, Brian, you're a breath of fresh air because it seems like you're very just an optimist.

And too often you get a lot of people around you that things are going wrong we can't do anything right type thing and i just i'm constantly pushing forward but i want to do it from a positive from a point of love not perfection and i like i said you've been great and we got to do it again but i always ask a lot of questions and i know I probably left some really good things out that we probably needed to go over, but I wanted to give you a minute to maybe talk to the audience and give them some final thoughts,

maybe some things we left out that you really wanted to get across on today's topic. I would love to, you know, I'm called America's breakthrough coach because I've had close to a million people over the last 30 years, actually physically break through one inch thick thick boards karate style in my events. And it's the greatest metaphor of individual and team breakthrough.

And so I've had all these people do it. In fact, I've had a 95-year-old 4-foot 10-inch woman break her board karate style who had no idea she could do it when she started out. But here's why I'm bringing this up. It's not about breaking boards. It's that ultimately what breaks the board is not your physical strength, it's where you focus. And if people recognize that if you focus on the obstacle, you get more of the obstacle. Now, you don't pretend there's no obstacle because then it could hurt worse, but you shift your focus. When a little child is learning to ride a two-wheeler bike and there's a big rock in the road, what do they focus on? The rock. They hit the rock. They fall over. They

scrape their elbow. Two weeks later, same kid, same bike, bigger rock. What happens now? They go around it. But what goes around it first, not their bike, their vision. And so if you start today by recognizing that what you focus on is what you create, when you start to focus on the rock instead of the way around it, move that around. And here's one last principle that ties into that. As we go through any tough times, whether it's your dad dealing with COVID, whether it's radical changes in our business, within every adversity is planted the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. I'll say it again. Within every adversity is planted the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. So the toughest things we make our way through in life, aren't they usually

the things from which we grow the most? And so if you approach, when you hit those rocks, when you hit those obstacles, when you already know there's going to be something here that'll make me better, there's already something here to be something here that'll make me better. There's already something here that I can learn that can make a difference. It doesn't mean that it won't be tough for a while, but it means that you'll move towards that possibility instead of that limit. That's, I think, a really powerful way to live your life.

One year ago, my business went completely bottoms up. 80 events booked in March 10th of 2020. By March 20th, I had zero events booked. And yet I had a great year because I learned things I never would have learned had I not had to face that adversity. Was it easy? No.

Was it scary a little bit? Oh, for a little while. But I had that belief that I know something good is going to come of this and I'm going to learn things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. That makes each day filled with possibility and helps you really move from fear to freedom, from failure to faith, from ego to ego, and from good to great. I love it. Well, hey, that seems like you planned that last part. That was good.

That's great. Well, listen, I hope the audience reaches out. I think they haven't read your books yet. They got to read your books. And Brian, you've been great. And I can't thank you enough for coming on. Tommy, one of the most fun interviews I've ever had because it just went where it was going to go. And you asked really perceptive questions. Thanks for all that you do. And I'll look forward to keeping a great touch. Have a great day. Thank you. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.

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