The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 402: Donald Miller - How To Tell Your Story, Take Action, & Transform Your Life

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 to join thousands of leaders of leaders from all over the world and read "Mindful Monday." A carefully curated email of the most useful leadership articles/books/video. Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 #402: Donald Miller - CEO of Business Made Simple Notes: The Characteristics of a Value Driven Professional: "Value driven successful people see themselves as an economic product on the open market. They are obsessed with getting people a strong return on the investment made in them. People who are obsessed with being a good investment attract further investment and get to enjoy more personal economic value. When you offer greater economic value within the economic ecosystem, you are paid more, given more responsibility and promotions, and are sought after by customers looking for value. In business, your boss may really like you, but in large part, they see you as an economic investment. There is nothing wrong with that. So how do we become ridiculously successful? By making other people absurdly successful." "If you know how to make people money, you will make a lot of money." They have a bias towards action - "There is one thing every successful person has in common: They have a bias towards action." They don't let ideas die on the vine. They take action to make those ideas happen. While others may have terrific ideas or be able to see an important issue from many angles, action-oriented people are good at getting things done." They see themselves as a hero, not a victim. Ask, "How often do you position yourself as a victim?" How often do you talk about yourself as though you are not in control of your life? Do you believe other people are responsible for your failures? Don was born in Texas and grew up poor. His dad left and never came back. His mom had to work long hours just to keep him and his sister alive. He told me, "The biggest transformation in my life happened when I stopped thinking of myself as a victim and started thinking of myself as the hero. I lost 150 pounds and became more in control of my life. If you're always the victim, you'll find that people get tired of carrying your load." They know feedback is a gift. They create an established routine in which they get feedback from their peers. They are relentlessly optimistic - Staying optimistic, you dramatically increase the chances that at some point you will succeed. The more optimistic you are, the more willing you will be willing to try. Successful people fail all the time. The difference is their willingness to keep trying. A story has four characters: Victim - The victim is rescued by the hero. The victim makes the hero look good. It's a bit part. Villian - A backstory of pain. The villian seeks vengeance. Hero - Faces challenges, is focused, overcomes obstacles. Guide - Older, sage, wise. Helps others win "I remember when my biggest transformation happened. I realized that girls wanted to be with the hero, not the victim. I lost 150 pounds." Taking action: "The magic is not in the thinking, it's in the doing." Be a "delusional optimist." It's scientifically proven that people who believe they can do something accomplish more than those who don't. What is a story? "A character that overcomes conflict to try to accomplish something." "Invite people to overcome an obstacle and solve a problem." One piece of advice: "Be known for solving a problem." One problem. We are all in sales. What is sales? "Clear articulation of how you can solve someone's problem." How To Create a Mission Statement and Guiding Principles: "The #1 job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going." "The #2 job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters." "The #3 job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story." In Don's personal guiding principles, his repeatable critical actions are: "get up early, you write, and you say, "after you."  -- Those 3 critical actions establish a way of life that if repeated day in and day out ensures success. Know how to attract people to your mission by telling your story. How do we do this? What's the biggest mistake made? (Biggest mistake is telling their history, complete with bullet points and boring asides). Your history is not your story. Here is a formula for a good, short mission statement: "We will accomplish ____________ by ___________ because of _________. How To Be Productive -- Make Wise Daily Decisions - Every morning you ask yourself a simple question: "If this were the second time I were living this day, what would I do differently?" Bill Gates is never late to a meeting. How does he ensure he's always on time? He blocks his time The StoryBrand methodology: A character that wants something The character encounters a problem The character meets the guide The guide gives the hero a plan The guide calls the hero to action When clarifying your marketing message, never position yourself as the hero. Always position yourself as the guide. The Core Competencies that will immediately make or save the company money: They are a clear and compelling leader - Align & inspire a team. Create a mission statement & guiding principles They are personally productive - Mastered a specific system They know how to clarify a message They can sell - introduce products to qualified leads They are great communicators - Give a speech that informs & inspires a team They know how to run an execution system

When you are selling things that you believe so much in that you really just want to give them away, you found the right thing to sell. What I tell my salespeople is selling is simply the clear articulation of how you can solve somebody's problem. That's it. It is not convincing somebody to give me their money or tricking them into giving their money. It's clearly articulating what you have created and the problem that it solves. And then if people want to buy it, they buy it. They don't want to buy it. They don't want to buy it.

I really don't care. What I care about is whether I clearly articulate the problem that it solves. If you don't sell, you do not believe you can solve problems. You don't. Or you don't believe that the problem you solve is actually worth bothering somebody. And let me tell you something. If you don't believe that your idea is worth bothering somebody for, you will work for somebody who thinks their idea is worth it.

Guaranteed. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4-4-2-2 in order to become part of Mindful Monday, a carefully curated email. I send every Monday morning at 9 o'clock Eastern to ensure you are starting your week off right with the most impactful articles, ideas, thoughts, videos, podcasts, books to ensure you're becoming a better

leader. And you'll get more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4422. Now on tonight's featured leader, the great Donald Miller is back. He's the CEO of StoryBrand. He's written multiple New York times best-selling books, including his latest titled Business Made Simple. A few of the topics we discuss, how and why you should create your mission statement and guiding principles. The detail behind how Don has done this for himself is a great story to help you do it for yourself.

And then Don shares a key framework to better tell us. your story as well as to become a better storyteller. And then he shares the three key characteristics of the value-driven professional, which is what you want to become. Ladies and gentlemen, not only is this educational, but with Don, it is very entertaining. It's Donald Miller. Don, to start, the 10 characteristics of a value-dicture. driven professional. This part really jumped out to me as I was preparing for our time together,

reading your latest book. And I want to hit a few of those and ask you to expand on them if you're cool with it. I'd love that. So number one, really impacted me, especially when I selfishly, at least thought about my career, but then thought about anybody who may be listening that this is a great approach to your life, to your career. And that is when you ask the question, and how do most successful people see themselves? You said they see themselves as an economic product on the open market, meaning they want to be a good investment to attract further investment. They are obsessed with getting people a strong return on the investment made in them.

And so that part, I thought, I like viewing your career in that manner. And if so, I feel like the ability to make things happen and to get things done to provide value to other people, that's going to go up. So can you share more about successful people who see themselves as an economic product on the open market? Yeah, you know, in some ways, it's a little bit offensive, right? To say that there's a number floating above your head, that you're worth 15 bucks an hour and this person over here is worth 30. And I literally have a buddy who's worth $10,000 an hour. he's paid for his consulting services. And he's worth it because those people need very specific information about specific things that really only he knows and maybe a few other people.

But it also makes it sound like some people are worth a lot and some people are not. And what I want to emphasize in the book is that it is true. I mean, if you have skill sets where you can drop some potatoes into some grease for three minutes and pull them out on time, you're worth about $12 an hour on the open market. The reality is, though, you can actually control the number floating above your head. So if you're somebody who just knows how to drop French rise into Greece, you're worth X. But if you can actually unite a team around a common mission, you're worth twice that. And if you can create a sales funnel, you're worth three times that. And if you can read a P&L statement or understand how to keep overhead low while increasing

marketing and sales budgets, well, now you're worth 100 bucks an hour. So the downside is on the open market, there is actually a number floating above your head. The upside is you get to control it. And so the idea is only offensive when you can no longer control that number, that somebody else is putting that number above your head. And so what I wanted this book to do, and it's just a $20 book, I wanted it to help you control the number above your head. I wanted to give leverage back to the people.

Let me be really clear, though, there's not a number floating above your head, or I hope there's not with your spouse, with your kids, with your friends, with God, at your church. This is just an economic reality, which is not what life is. really about it's just a part of life. But we all want to make more money. We all want to be worth more. We all want to walk into a company and negotiate a higher salary. And the only way to do that is to actually increase your skill sets and your skillsets do increase that number. In fact, there are people at my company who have learned so much that I've literally, before we do our annual raises, I've had to call them in three and four months before and give them a raise before I give them their raise.

I see the number floating above their head go up. And what that means is that number is floating above their head is going up. Somebody else could pick them off and I've got to compete. So this is a great way to say, look, instead of you competing for a job, why not make a job compete to get you, right? And the only way to do that is to make that number above your head go up. So hopefully it's a liberating idea rather than a burdensome idea. I love it.

And you say in business, your boss may really like you, but in large part they see you as an economic investment. and there's nothing wrong with that. So how do we become ridiculously successful by making other people absurdly successful? And if you think about your career and how you work with that mindset, I feel like the odds of you adding value

to the lives of your boss, your customers, the people you work with, dramatically will go up. Right. Oh, it absolutely does. People tend to invest more money in stocks that are doing well. Why? Because they get a great return.

They divest themselves of stocks that are not doing well. So if you know how to make people money, you will make lots of money. And people ask you all the time, Don, what's the secret? You know, we have a five-year-old company. We're at $16.5 million this year. We have a 50% profit, no debt, no partners, no equity. That's a lot of money. It's actually, it's more like a 64% profit margin.

And you say, well, what's the key to making that money? Well, the key to me making $16.5 million is to make somebody else $160 million. That's how you do it. And there's really no way around it. You're not taking money from people. You're taking an investment from people and getting them more money in return. So even when I do one day consulting, which I don't do very often anymore, but I charge a lot of money for that day of consulting. But I guarantee a 10x return on whatever they pay me. Now, I'll only go to companies in which that 10x return can be made. But I tell them, look, we're going to talk in three, six, eight months. If you haven't made a 10x return on what you paid me, I'm going to write you a check back. Really? Absolutely. I promise it. Wow. And you know what? I've never written the checkback. And the reason, what do you charge for a day of consulting? I hate to say it's $50,000. So they have to make, why do you have to hate to say it, man? Because it sounds so selfish, right? But unless they make $500,000 back, I will give them their $50,000 back. So that also determines which companies I'm working for, right? If they're making $25 or $30 million,

if they're launching a new product, if they have a product that should be doing well, but it's not. I do my research and when they pay me the money, they make their money back usually within days because they were talking about their product wrong or they were structuring production wrong or they were doing something that they didn't know they were doing wrong. And another company will come to me and say, hey, we got this great product. We're doing extremely well. But I look at their messaging. Their messaging is great. I look at their production. Their production is great. And I say, I can't help you. I might be able to help you make $100,000 more dollars, but I can't keep my guarantee of a 10x return because you're already doing so well. But the eye.

The principle behind that is if you learn how to make people money, you will make money yourself. Even as a team member on a team, if you're getting $100,000 or $75,000 paycheck, you really want to try to figure out how you can make that company 750. Now, you said, Dom, why would I make somebody 750? I only get 75. Well, they're paying for the building. They're paying for health insurance. They're paying for all sorts of other insurance. They're paying for the product. At the end of the day, they're probably only making a one-x return on your paycheck. So you've got to make them a lot more money in order to be worth more money. But when you do that, you find that you get raises, you get promotions, you basically understand how business works. You say, Don, well, you're just

saying that because you're the business owner. Well, I have the same relationship with my customers. My customers are my boss. And if I don't make them money, they drop me like a hot rock, right? They are not interested. So I'm under the same pressure that we're all under. The pressure gets taken off quite a bit when you know what you're doing. And so that's why I wrote this book. I wanted to teach people what they don't teach in college. And that's how to actually grow a business. When I remember I recently recorded with Jim Collins, Don, it was awesome. And he walked me through what it's like when he works with businesses or with CEOs and leaders. And I like hearing his process for asking questions. And I'm curious when somebody hires you and they pay you 50 grand in order

to make 10x on that return. What are some of the, the initial questions and or thoughts, your framework that jumpstart the conversation for one day with Don Miller. I would love to go inside the room. I know each situation is unique. I know each company's different. I know each leader is different, but you probably have some sort of framework or ideas you bring to that consulting engagement. How do they start? I guess is my question. Yeah, you know, it takes one hour to really understand what's wrong. And I ask a series of questions about how you make money. That's really it.

Tell me how you make money. And they start diagramming the company. Now, I have in my mind that the magic is, I have in my mind a picture of what a company should look like. And as they're describing their company, I'm comparing the perfect company to their company and seeing the flaws. And the way I do that is through the metaphor of an airplane. And I teach that in the book.

A business really works like an airplane. The cockpit is your leadership team. The body of the airplane is your overhead. That's your building, your health insurance, all those costs that you have that are necessary in running a business. The wings of the airplane are your products, and your products need to be both in demand and profitable or they won't work. And the airplane wings need to be very large and very light and very strong. The right engine is your marketing. The left engine is your sales.

And then the fuselage is your cash flow. So you can have a perfectly designed airplane, but if you don't have any cash, it's going to crash. You can have a really great design airplane, but if your engines are too small, it's not going to get off the ground. If your wings are too small, i.e., your products are not profitable, the airplane's going to crash. So you and I could walk up to an airplane and see it, and the body of the airplane is really giant. The wings are really tiny. It's got two little propellers of engines, and you would know intuitively, do not get on that airplane. That airplane is not going to fly. Well, in about an hour, you can figure that out with a business. And you can say,

Okay, I see your problem. The problem is you doubled down on a product three years ago because one big customer wanted it. They ordered one unit of it and you realized really quickly that nobody else wants this. So now you have wings that are too small. You are running a, you're spending $50,000 a month with an advertising firm, but you never clarified your message. So what I see is a massive ad spend on that ride engine, which is marketing, but no thrust coming out of that ride engine. So we're going to overhaul that right. engine. Your sales team is not appropriately compensated, which is affecting the thrust of your sales engine. Or, and this is the number one mistake, you are really trying to look like a successful business without being a successful business. So you've got a really fancy office, lots of great furniture, and you can't afford it. So you've got a giant belly of the airplane that's massive overhead, and it's too heavy for the products and the marketing and the sales to lift. Another problem is your cockpit just doesn't know where it's going. The leadership does not have the checklist to go down to understand what our mission is,

why it's important, and why it would get a team invigorated and customers interested. So we've got to deal with your cockpit. So it's going to be one of those areas, the cockpit, the overhead, the wings, the right and left engine, or the fuselage. Those are the things that can go wrong in a business. but you get those right and it flies far and it flies fast. Is there a difference between, or I guess I should say, what is the difference between, let's say, a service-based business

versus a business that has an actual physical product? Well, there are lots in terms of overhead because you can have an inventory, especially if it's something like a restaurant. Inventory is actually always expiring. And so that's why restaurant overhead is so big and profit margins are so small. You know, service industries, you're dealing with people. And so in a service industry, you want that concrete to understand the mission of the organization,

be able to communicate that mission so that everybody is unified around that mission. But honestly, there's not that much of a change. Your management and execution system has to be just about the same. Your service industry is probably going to have a lot more people involved, and the product industry may have less people. So there are pros and cons on each side. but the general basics of business of running that airplane are exactly the same. Don, I want to talk a little bit about you personally in relation to one of the characteristics

of being a value-driven professional. And that is people who are value-driven professionals see themselves as a hero and not a victim. And I want to share a little bit of background on that because everyone grows up differently. everyone has different levels of privilege. Everyone has different challenges they're dealing with, and I fully understand that. And I fully understand the luck that I have personally been born into with great parents and great brothers that have supported me and love me continually to this day. In your case, you grew up poor. Your dad left and never came back. Your mom had to work really long hours to keep you alive. And so because of that, I would imagine, and I think you mentioned

that you did do this, you could have played the victim role, the victim card, basically for your life if you chose. Instead, you chose something differently. I'd love for you to share your mindset around being a victim versus being a hero and why that's so important for people to be a value-driven professional. Well, you know, in stories, there are really four major characters, four major roles. There's the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. Those four roles exist in almost every story. And the reason they exist in stories is because they exist, not just in life, they exist in you, they exist in me. We have within us a victim, a villain, a hero, and a guide. And we play those different roles. The key is

to understand what happens in stories to each of those characters. The victim is rescued by the hero. They do not transform. The story is not about them. They do not get a reward. The role of the victim, the job of the victim is to make the hero look good and the villain look bad.

That's it. It's actually a bit part. But sometimes in life we're tempted to play the victim because it does a couple things for us. It helps us out of the responsibility that is ours. So if we're a victim, we don't have to do our work. We don't have to clean our room. We don't have to file taxes.

We don't have to because we're a victim. So it's a very tempting role to play because it gets you out of some responsibilities. Also playing the victim actually attracts a rescuer, somebody to come in and do the work for you. So you will find people who play the victim or they have learned victim mentality. And, you know, I grew up really poor. mom worked extremely hard, but we still had to stand in line for government cheese. She never made a living wage, made terrible grades because I didn't apply myself and also just didn't have any help. And life was chaotic at home.

I could have stayed that victim for a really long time. And instead, I learned, I somehow got into an honors psychology class when I was in high school. It was a college level class. I know how I did it. I convinced the counseling office let me get in, even though my grades weren't good enough to get in. And I got a 99 in the class, and I learned that I was actually intelligent. I really didn't until I was a senior in high school to know that I had any sort of intelligence at all. I thought I was dumb.

That's a learned victim mentality. And when that happened, I transformed. I began the process of transforming. It really took all my 20s to transform into more of a heroic mentality. So a hero faces challenges. They are focused. They overcome hard obstacles. They take action.

They take down a villain. They fight for justice. They fight to accomplish their goals. My own identity in my 20s began to change from victim to hero. And that began to change the trajectory of my life. Heroes are rewarded. Heroes are respected. Heroes accomplish things and have things because they've accomplished things.

That's what heroes do. There's also a villain mentality, and villains and heroes are very similar. Heroes and villains both have a backstory of pain. That's why you'll see in movies, you'll see the villain with a limp or a scar on their face. It's the writer's way of saying, hey, something painful happened. Heroes also have painful backstories. They just choose to do different things with that pain. The hero says, I don't want this pain to happen to anybody else.

I'm going to go fight so it doesn't happen to anybody else. and the villain says, I'm going to seek vengeance. And we can fall into villain mentality. Somebody cut me off in a parking lot the other day. Or actually, I cut somebody else off in a parking lot. And they just dramatically threw up their hands and made a big deal out of it. And I rolled down my window after they got out of the car. I said, oh, man, I'm so sorry.

And he goes, oh, don't worry about it. And I go, no, I mean, I'm sorry that I really hurt you so badly. Can I find you a victim support group? I mean, I just laid into the guy. And he was just out. There was no question in my mind. I was absolutely playing the villain at that point, right? The very calm, calculated, vengeful villain.

And I drove away, and of course, I felt embarrassed and ashamed. And what if that guy recognizes me and tells his friends? And I was just, you know, but we fall into these emotional states sometimes where we attempted to play the victim, the hero, the villain. And then the guide is the older sage character who's played the hero for so long. They can now help other heroes win. And, of course, as we get older, you play that role on your show. You help other heroes win.

That's your role on this podcast. And that's why it's a popular podcast. So those four roles are within us. We play all four probably every single day. You know, if I don't eat, if I skip lunch, I'm definitely the victim at about two o'clock, wanting to take a nap and saying, oh, life is too hard. You know, it just depends. But the reality is the more you play the hero, the better life is going to go.

The more you play the victim, the less you're going to grow as a human being. The more you play the villain, the more likely you are to end up in jail. or shot, right? I mean, that's what we do with villains. We take them down. And if I would have kept that up in the parking lot for another week, I'd probably be in jail right now, right? You've got to stop that mentality.

The more you play the guide, the more you'll be respected and adored. So what I teach in the book is that these value-driven professionals, and listen, I spent time with presidents of the United States, first ladies, members of the judiciary, members of the presidential cabinet, NFL coaches. I spent a lot of time with really successful people in order to come up with these 10 characteristics. And one thing that they do not do is see themselves as a victim.

They just don't do it under any circumstances. It's like a gear shift in a car. You see yourself in a victim. You're grinding to a halt. You see yourself as a hero. The car can actually take off. That's what happens in our lives. Don, I sense you have a very high level of self-awareness.

And every single person listening right now can picture a victim that they know that has a victim mentality. the issue is the people who are those victims never think they are in their own mind right right because they have low levels of self-awareness so i i don't really know the answer i guess that's why i'm asking you the sage uh wisdom-filled guide for me how what do we do about those people who may be friends or family members who have a victim mentality yet they're listening to this saying oh that's definitely not me i don't have that never i'm never a victim i never play that role what do you what do you what What do you think about that dynamic in life? You know, it's really hard to hear criticism and accept criticism. It's hard for me. It's hard for anybody else because our defense mechanisms believe that if we are criticized, we will have less resources in order to survive. So not being self-aware is in some ways a perverted survival mechanism.

What I found was that being self-aware actually helps you get a true assessment of who you are so that you can improve, which is another survival mechanism. So self-awareness and not being self-aware are two survival mechanisms. One works and one doesn't. One thing, there's two things that really help me be more self-aware. One is when I stop judging myself. People who don't want to criticize themselves or change, they are probably guilty of really judging themselves too harshly.

And so instead of saying, Don, you're acting like a villain, you moron, don't ever do that again and you try to control yourself. I say, Don, you acted like a villain. Just be self-aware. No judgment. human beings do that, no fault. But let's be aware of that. And when you're aware, you find that you stop doing it, especially with victim mentality.

I think when we go into ourselves saying you're being a victim and you're such a loser and you'll never amount to anything if you keep this up, you wouldn't say that to another person. And I don't think we should say those things to ourselves. We just want to say, hey, you're doing that victim thing. Remember, that costs you. You have the choice to do it, the freedom to do it if you want to do it. But just remember it costs you. And when you remove that judgment, self-awareness becomes a lot easier.

And of course, I try to take that judgment off of people that I work with, too. The other thing that really helped me, and maybe somebody needs to hear this, I remember a point in time where the most evolution or transformation took place in my life, moving from victim to hero. I had learned as an overweight kid, I had learned to play the victim, especially in relationships, especially in relationships with girls when I was dating. I would almost attract girls by being sort of a victim. And I would attract, of course, girls who wanted to be a rescuer.

And it always created the most chaotic relationship, terrible chemistry. It doesn't work. And I finally looked in the mirror and said, you know what? I don't think women are attracted to victims. I think they're attracted to strong, capable, competent men. And as soon as I realized that I was no longer going to be rewarded by the opposite sex, by playing the victim, I stopped. I mean, it just stopped it in its tracks.

Just, you know, that's as primitive as that is, when I realized that it was one of the most helpful, healthy realizations I've ever had. And I ended up losing over almost 150 pounds. I used to be over 150 pounds heavier than I am now. And it's a whole mentality that you can get into of woe is me. I'm helpless. I can't do anything.

And you got to understand. And I don't even know you in terms of listening to the listeners on this podcast. There are thousands of people listening. So we haven't met. So this is, I mean, no personal judgment. But let me tell you what your friends and family and maybe some people who are close to you are thinking, this is unattractive. It's unattractive. And you're not going to get what you want. And the main reason it's unattractive is people get tired of carrying your load. They have their own load to carry. We're attracted to people who can come in and carry some of our suitcases. We're not attracted to people who hand us their suitcases to carry along with our own.

So victim mentality, I just want you to know, you may be attractive. attracting a rescuer, that's going to be a really dysfunctional relationship. You may be shirking your own responsibilities, but there's a point at which it just is no longer attractive. And if you want to be attractive, play the hero, not the victim. Okay, there is one thing every successful person has in common. This is in your study. And that is they have a bias towards action. They don't let ideas die on the vine. They take action to make those ideas happen. And I was, Don, last night preparing for this talking with my wife, Miranda, and I said, this quote is really jumping out at me. It's simple. Yet when I started, we started literally naming people in our lives,

friends, coworkers, people that we've worked with in the past and said, the people who are making it happen, sustaining it over time are the ones. Don says has a bias towards action. And I thought, that is so true. They may not be the most intelligent. They may not have. the best education. They may not have gone to the best college. And yet, though, they're the ones, they're hustling, they're working hard, they're taking action. And so you point this out, and I'd love for you to share more about the importance and why more of us need to have a bias towards taking action. Well, you know, it came out of so many relationships, so many friends, so many people that I've met, literally flying on their private jets.

And I've thought to myself, I don't get it. This person really isn't that intelligent. They're not dumb by any stretch of imagination. But they're just not college scholar, professor level intelligence. And that's where I love those people. I tend to surround myself by people who are great thinkers. But what I found was the magic wasn't in the thinking, it was in the doing. that somehow this person figured out, you know, I can read a bunch of books about an idea or I can just go do something.

And going and doing something is what got them the private jet. In fact, it really changed my life in the sense that I still study. I'm still a nerd. But I take a lot of action. I mean, when I have an idea, I move. Let's go. And I've been richly rewarded for that. So, you know, I want to be careful because I don't want to be insulting.

but I think that taking action is a superpower, that you can sit and, you know, if you sit and talk to somebody like Lance Armstrong, not the most intelligent guy in the world. I mean, I'll just use a public figure who's kind of screwed up in many, many ways. Not intelligent. I mean, just really, not self-aware, not intelligent, doesn't read a lot of books, but the man takes action. He gets stuff done and it led to a lot of success and a lot of other things that weren't so great. You know, that's an example I can use, but there are so many more of people who just, you know, while you're thinking about it, they're doing it. And you can sit and think about something all day, but the guy is doing it's going to beat you.

And so have a strong bias toward action. Let's, you know, at some point in my company, we'll sit, we'll talk about something for about 10 or 15 minutes. And then I'll say, okay, what are we going to do? are we doing this or not? And I make the team go. If we're going to go or we're not going to go. And they say, wait, but you know, something bad could happen. We've got to think it through. You know what? We're really great at dealing with problems on the run, but we're going to run. We're not going to sit here and calculate every problem that could possibly happen, everything that could possibly go wrong.

We're going to go. We're going to run. We're smart people. We'll figure it out on the go. We're going to move. And that's what's made a huge difference in my company. One of the one of I think the ideas that is a brother to that is they are relentlessly optimistic. And by staying optimistic, you dramatically increase the chances that at some point you will succeed. It's not necessarily the fact that they don't fail or that they don't mess up or they don't make mistakes. It's the fact, the difference in these types of people is their willingness to keep going, to keep trying, to keep taking action. and they believe with their optimism and optimistic mindset that it will work out. And so that that is the difference too between the ones who are not making it happen

and the ones who are who are who are, is that they have this willingness to to keep going in the midst of mistakes, failure, screw ups, whatever it may be. Yeah, I would even say delusionally optimistic. Not just relentlessly, delusional optimistic people have a strategic advantage. There was a study Business Insider reported on recently. and they basically studied a group of people. Some were pessimists.

Some were cynics and some were delusionally optimistic. And what they found was that the cynics and the pessimistic people were much more accurate in their assessment of what they could do and could not do. They were actually accurate. The delusionally optimistic people believed they could do things that they could not do. But the difference is, and they did this in the form of a puzzle, The cynics said, I can't work this puzzle, and they were right. The delusionally optimistic people said, I can do this puzzle, and they were wrong.

So why do we want to be wrong? Well, what they found was that the delusional optimistic people were 70% more likely to finish the puzzle. They just didn't do it in the amount of time that they thought they could do it. And they thought they could do it in five minutes, but they did it in five hours. And there's something about a delusional optimistic person that keeps forgetting their failures. And they keep saying, oh, I didn't do it in five minutes. Let me give me another five minutes. We'll give me another five minutes.

Where the pessimist says, look, it's impossible. The delusionally optimistic person stays so optimistic that they keep going. So it's actually you're tricking yourself into doing a hard thing. I've said to, I've just realized this on 49, I'll be 50 this summer. I've written eight or nine books now. And I realized something just a month ago. I realized, you know what? I keep tricking myself into thinking the next.

book is going to be easy. I've done it now nine times. I keep thinking, you know, I could probably write that in about three months. Well, a year and a half later, I wrap up the book and turn it in. So if I were realistic and pessimistic even about writing books, I would have never written a single one. But because I'm delusionally optimistic about how easy this thing is going to be, I trick myself into doing it and virtually rewarded for it. So it's a bit of a weird dynamic, but it is true. Delusionally optimistic people tend to succeed. Is that a learned trait, or is that something you're born with? I don't know. Let's take it to you. Like, what do you think? Is that something you had to learn? Did you have a guide that helped you see? Like, in my case,

I did. Mike, that's how my, you're describing my dad. He is just overly optimistic about literally everything, everything when it comes to just life. Hey, every day is a holiday. every meal is a banquet, that type of mentality. And so I grew up with it. And so maybe I was born with it too. I don't know. But I'm curious, what do you think about that? Can somebody listening now who is maybe more cynical and realist, not, doesn't have any, like there's no delusion in their mindset? What do you think? Well, I think it can be learned because I spent my entire high school years thinking that the world was terrible and I was doomed to failure. And it was, you know, and again, and wait 150 more pounds than I do now and made terrible grades and girls weren't attracted to me

and so on and so on. So I think you can't switch, but I would say the root of delusional optimism is that transformation from victim to hero. That once you, that what, cynics and pessimists, what they're really saying is it can't happen for me. You know, it would be like winning the lottery. And I would say, no, it's not like winning the lottery. You control much, much more of the percentages than you think. And heroes tend to forget their failures pretty quickly or learn from them and move on where victims tend to live in them. So I think you can learn it. But I also think it's a rational series of thoughts when you say, well, look, you know, if only 10% of the opportunities work out, all I have to do is try 10 times and I'm guaranteed. You know, and the

cynics would say, well, 90% of time it doesn't work. So let's not try. And I'm sitting there going, you're crazy. If you do it 10 times, you're guaranteed a success. Let's go. Right? And you might even hit your success on the fourth try. Then you can start over with the next success. So to me, it's just, it just makes complete sense of life.

Yeah. I would imagine, though, I guess I'm curious of people's motivations towards those who doubt them or maybe project their negativity on them. How much of that has happened in your life? And if so, does that fuel you at all? I don't know that it fuels me. Maybe it does. But, you know, when you grow up in the home that I grew up in

and you grew up as poor as we did, you grew up making as bad grades as I made, and you're 150 pounds heavier, you're twice the weight that you should be. I remember sitting down during this transformation after this honors psychology class and writing down, I lived in Texas, I wrote down that I wanted to live in Oregon. By the time I was 35, I wanted to be a millionaire, and I wanted to be a New York Times bestselling author. Now, I made the mistake of telling a few people that, and they looked at me like I was absolutely crazy, like I believed in magic.

Well, by the time I was 30, I lived in Oregon. I was a millionaire and I had a book on the New York Times bestsellers list for about a year. And I was a different person. I was a completely different human being. So I think there are people who, you know, I'm reading Barack Obama's book about life in the White House. And one of the comments that he made that I sort of chuckled at was he said he's positive that he had many, many friends who after he became president thought to themselves, really? that guy? Right. And so you tend to think great successes happen to other people. And when you know somebody, and you've seen their quirks and you've seen them, you know, spill ketchup on their

shirt, you just don't think that person is going to be able to succeed. And I give people a lot of grace. You know, moving on, when I was a best-selling author, I was an artist. I mean, I hung out in coffee shops. I didn't even balance my checkbook. And a buddy of mine invited me, on his private jet to a Seattle Seahawks game. And then we went skiing up in Montana. And I'm sitting there looking at his private jet. And I'm thinking, you know, I want one of these. This is really nice.

I think I'll start a business. You know, if I would have said that out loud, that guy would have said, Don, you're an artist. You're not a business guy. Give me a break. Anybody would have said that to me because they were exactly right. I was an artist. But the truth is, business is not hard to learn. And I learned it.

And I don't have a private jet. I'll never have a private jet because I think they're a giant waste of money. But I could if I wanted to. And so that was unbelievable. And now I'm starting a political advocacy group to help build the middle class. And I want to lobby Congress. And I want to get behind an independent candidate who will help change the country instead of these Democrats and Republicans who I think waste our money and waste our time with a bunch of theatrics. And people would say, Don, an independent candidate can't get elected president.

And I would say, well, we'll see, right? We're going to do. We're going to have fun trying. We're going to be delusional optimistic. You know, and 10 years from now, let's talk again. maybe something has happened where we've gotten somebody elected who is not part of these political parties. Could that be you? I don't think I don't think I'm actually that interested. I really like my life. Betsy's pregnant with our first kid. I've been in the White House. It's not, it doesn't seem like a fun place to be.

And so I don't think so. I think there's plenty of other candidates. But I would like to be a, I would like to participate in helping change the country. Another thing you write about is is having personal guiding principles. I really dug into this section and I want to share yours and then talk more about why they are yours and what others could create for themselves because we're trying to be the guide here. And your personal guiding principles, you have three repeatable critical actions that as you get up early, you write and you say after you. That's right. Why are those your three critical actions? and can you share a little bit more about the background in each of those three? Yeah, you know, I have core values.

I have a mission statement and I have these critical actions. And the critical actions are really important. They're all part of a guiding principle package that I teach you in the book. But one of them is critical actions. And they are, I get up early. I write and I say after you. What I was looking for were three things that I could do every day that would pretty much guarantee success, three easy things. You're looking for the lead domino that makes a lot of other dominoes fall.

So, you know, yesterday I got up at 4 a.m. I got some meditation done and some reading done. At six, I called the president of my company. We talked until about seven. And at seven, I was sitting outside of a coffee shop. It opened at seven. They know me. I walked into the door with my laptop from seven to nine.

I worked. So let's say that I get up at seven. Well, by 1030, I've got somebody calling me for a meeting. I don't get any writing done that day. If I don't get writing done, I don't put a book on the best sellers. If I don't put a book on the best sellers list, I don't get leads. If I don't get leads, I can't convert them to customers. So by getting up early every day, I'm virtually guaranteeing that the way I've structured

my life that I'm going to do really well financially and I'm going to be able to impact a lot of lives. I write, I recognize that of all the things I do, I speak, I'm in meetings, I make decisions, I counsel others, but it's the writing that is really the foundation of everything I do. So I've got to write every day. Then the other one is I say after you, and that sounds like a goofy one, but literally like if you and I met at a door, I would hopefully open the door and say after you. And that's just my way of saying, hey, put other people first. I'm not a selfish person, I don't believe, but I'm extremely goal-oriented and I get tunnel vision. And so I will not see others when I get so driven. And it's just those words after you, after you, after you that wakes me up from that

tunnel vision and says, hey, Don, you're not the only one on the planet. There are other people. There's your wife. There's the people that you work with. There's your clients. There's your good friends. Let's see these people and help them get where they need to go with a good chunk of our time rather than getting needed in my life and saying, I would hate to go to my funeral and everybody to say, you know, he was so goal oriented and accomplished. That just feels so empty, doesn't it? Instead, I want them to say, you know what? He helped me win. Over and over and over, he helped me win. He dropped what he was doing and he helped me win.

And so I've got to put that in action every day or they're not going to say that about me. And I won't. And what will happen is I'll get to the amount of life and it won't have felt very meaningful. I know I'm bounced around the book here because there's a ton here. But one of, I think story brand is where I first heard of you. And the marketing aspects of it and how to do that. And I encourage people to listen to the first time we talked, which is more than four and a half years ago, July of 2016. It's episode 142 for those. And now we're well over 400. And we talk a lot about story brand there.

But I do want to focus on telling your story because when I say you are, I mean people in general, because there are people listening down who are going for interviews, who are trying to get promoted, who own a business and are trying to do a better job of telling their story. So there's a wide variety of people that I'm trying to help. And I'm, and I also, obviously, this is my own curiosity conversation. So I want to get better at doing this. And you've written about the fact that you need to know how to attract people to your mission by telling your story. And that one of the biggest mistakes we make in doing this is we just tell our boring bullet point history of our story. How can those of us who tell our story that way stop? making that mistake and get better at attracting others to our mission, whether we're trying to

get promoted or trying to hire a superstar to work with us or trying to get a great client, how do we attract people to our mission by telling our story better? Well, I'll give you a formula. Your history is just things that have happened in your past, but don't be confused. Your history is not your story. Story is structured. It's formulaic. And in order to entice people into a story, you need to use the formula. So let me give you one. a character that overcomes conflict in order to accomplish something important. That's really it, a character that overcomes conflict in order to accomplish something important. So let's say that you're trying to grow your business or whatever you do.

You can invite people into a story using that formula. So let's say you're at a cocktail party. You meet two different people. They do the same thing. They're both at-home chefs. You meet the first person and you say, what do you do? And they say, well, I'm an at-home chef. And you might have questions.

You know, what's your favorite thing to cook? what are your favorite restaurants, you ever cooked for anybody famous. You know, you're just making conversation. You meet the next person, and instead of telling you what they do, they invite you into a story. So you say, what do you do? And they say, well, you know how most families don't have time to eat together anymore? And when they do, they don't eat healthy. I'm an at-home chef.

I come to your house. I cook a meal so that you and your family can sit around the table, look each other in the eye, and connect. And when you're done with that meal, you don't feel guilty about what you fed them. Now, who's going to get the business? Chef one or Chef two? If they're the same chef, the same quality, the same price point, Chef two is getting all of the business. And the reason is they invited the customer into a story in which they could overcome an obstacle and solve a problem to have a better life. So let's say you're doing an interview and you're interviewing for a job

and somebody says, why should we hire you? Well, you should say, well, in the job application and in our conversation here, I've noticed that you guys are struggling with this problem. I want you to know, I love solving that problem. And when I solve that problem for this company, this happened. And when I solved the problem for this company, this happened. When I solve the problem for this company, this happened. Now, if you hire me, I'll work to solve the problem for you. And if you do, I think this will happen. I'd love to hear from you. You're going to get that job. Because the only reason you're in there is because they have a problem. And what they're trying to figure out is can you solve it? and none of the other applicants are going to sit there and so articulately say,

here's why we're having this conversation. It's because you have a problem. Here's something I want you to know. I'm really good at solving that problem and I can solve it for you. Then they're going to go, you're going to walk out of the room and they're going to go, okay, look, we got one person who can solve a problem. These other people are really nice. Let's get the problem solved.

They're going to realize that's why we interviewed these people in the first place, and you're the only one who actually has the confidence to say you can do it. Well, and remember what that applicant is focusing on. They're focusing on what the employer cares about, which is themselves. That's exactly right. Most people in general, again, this is a conversation that happens probably in most houses. You know, how do I look? How do these pants fit?

How is it? Well, in all actuality, people are more worried about how their pants fit, not how your pants fit. It's the same thing with an employer. If you're going to interview to be a leader or interview to be an entry-level, person or whatever it may be for a company. Or let's say you're interviewing with someone who wants to hire you. Yes, I guess they care some about your background and those are table stakes just probably to get into the room.

But what they most care about is how is this person going to help me? When I work with managers who are working to get hired to get promoted and the person they're going to promote, I'm sorry, report to as an SVP level. So they have a bunch of VPs reporting to them. I say, how can you prove to that SVP that you're going to make her or his life easier? Yeah, that's exactly. That person has so much. They have so much to deal with and so many problems.

If you can prove to them that you're not going to be a problem, in fact, you're going to solve problems and make their life easier in this one division, you'll probably get hired more so than other people. And I think that's the mindset of be others focused, be focused on them, that that is how you earn. whatever the job or the business is that you want. That's right. The president of our company has a son. He's in college. He has no work experience. But he got a hold of the material that's in this book, Business Made Simple. And he went in to apply for a job. And they just said to him, look, you're underqualified. We'd love to talk to you in a few years after you out of college. You get some experience. And he said, well, you know, I know I'm underqualified. But my guess is I think I can bring skill sets to this job that maybe some of the people who are you think are qualified can't bring. For instance, I can help you clarify your message,

which is what we teach in the book. I can help you clarify your message. You guys are saying this, but if you said it this way, I think you'd make more money. Also, I'm seeing gaps in your marketing sales funnel. The other thing is, I think your mission statement needs to be clarified. I think you can get everybody in this room around. And the person interviewing literally said, stop, stop, hold on. Where did you learn this stuff? He said, well, I learned it a business made simple. Literally, the interviewer said, can you hold on, went and got their boss and brought their boss into the room. They sat there for another two hours talking about all the stuff they needed to do at this company and they hired him on the spot. They probably called you too.

Yeah, probably. I hope so. Yeah, because you're right. What people are looking for is somebody to make their life easier, somebody to help them realize what they're doing wrong so that they can be more successful. And if you're going in saying, look, I'm a really great person. And And, you know, I comb my hair every day and I brush my teeth and I show up on time. None of that stuff solves my problem. What do you know how to do that will solve a problem? If somebody asked me the other day, they said, Don, I've got an 18-year-old and the 19-year-old, two sons. What's one piece of advice that you can give them?

I said, be known for solving a problem. Be known for solving a problem. If you're known for solving a problem, you will always be wanted and people will always pay you. Now, the problem can change as you develop as a professional. It can get more complex. and people will pay you more to solve that problem, but right out of the gate, be known for solving a problem.

How did you, I think people love that advice, but then they start thinking, and when I say they, I'm obviously projecting because I start thinking about myself, how did you develop the problem that you are going to solve? And then how did you solve it? I mean, there's two parts.

It's like, wait, what problem am I going to solve? And then how can I solve it? How did you come up with that? Because I think you've done a great job with this when it comes to story brand and help you, people clarify their message, right? That's the problem that you solve. How did you come up with it? And then how did you find the formula or the answer to solve that problem? Well, it all comes from story. It all comes from understanding what engages the human brain. And that's a problem that needs to be

solved. And once the problem is solved, you roll the credits. So a story is just a person with a problem that takes about 90 minutes to solve it. That's all it is. Every movie you watch is a person with a series of problems that take about 90 minutes to solve, maybe two hours, right? You know, Kevin is home alone. He's got two burglars trying to get into the house. He's got a problem. And he's going to solve it with swinging cans of paint down the staircase and so on and so forth. That's a movie. And so when you go into an interview, you're basically inviting them into a story. I see that you have this problem. It is unresolved. Let's resolve it. Every human being moves toward the resolution of a problem. Now, figuring out what problem is that you solve is probably difficult for a different reason.

and then everybody thinks. The reality is you probably solve a lot of problems. The problem is you need to choose one. You can really only be known for one. Now, you can solve a bunch of other problems while you're at it, but you want to solve a really valuable problem. So my book, Business Made Simple, it's 60 days, you pour yourself a cup of coffee, you read each daily entry, and you get a video in a drip campaign for about a 10-minute video, and in 60 days, you know more than anybody who just got an MBA. I guarantee you. you're going to be able to make people money if you know how to do this. What is the problem that I solved? Well, it could be that you don't know how to grow a business.

That's a nice one. But, you know, I recognize that college debt is a massive controversial problem. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to position my book to tackle an even bigger problem and therefore my book will be more attractive on the open market. I can say, you don't know how to grow a business, but I can teach you how with this book. Or college has screwed you over. you have $150,000 in debt or $100,000 or $50,000, whatever, you graduate from college with that debt.

You still don't know how to grow a business because you didn't learn how to grow a business. So they taught you, they gave you a certificate that will get you an interview, but they did nothing to help you climb the ladder. Because you have that debt, you can now not buy a house. You cannot put a down payment on a house because you don't have the money. That means it's not just costing you $50,000 in debt. It's costing you the equity that you would accrue in that house over the next 10 years. So now you're $100,000 behind. You finally get into that house.

And then you get hit with medical debt, right? Medical coverage and all the stuff we had to pay for our medical bills. Then you cannot pass on wealth to your child. So now the second generation that college debt is causing is people who didn't have their dad and their mom pay for their house. And now they're triple in debt than they were three generations ago because that's what's happening, by the way, to the middle class. what is one thing that we can do to solve that problem? You can take everything that it costs to go to college, put it in one book and charge $20 for it, skip college, which Amazon is now no longer asking for bachelor's degrees. Google is now no longer asking for bachelor's degrees because they see it.

They see this is the problem. The problem is we're requiring people to go get into debt and ruin their lives and not learn anything in order to work here. my book solves that problem and it costs $20. I think we're on to something good. Don, you write about the 10 core competencies that will immediately make or save the company money. Number six is something you're doing right now that I highly respect because it was my first ever job. When I got done playing football after college and a little bit after college, I got a job as an inside sales professional smile and dial 70, 80 calls a day.

most of the time they hang up or say no. Some days you would have a zero. Some weeks you'd have a zero. But if you keep kept after it, you could make something happen. In your case, you're not afraid to sell. No. And selling is about introducing products to qualified leads. And this is, I think, a core competency of anyone who's going to work in a business or anything.

We are all selling at all times to all people, whether it's a product, an idea, a service. Sales is what makes the world work. dad told me the world would literally come to a grinding, screeching halt if there weren't sales professionals. Everything in this room has been sold. Everything in your room has been sold. You're selling right now. Can you talk more about why every person listening to this needs to become better at the profession of selling? Well, let me tell you what happens when you're not good at selling. What you're communicating is that you do not believe in your product. You do not believe in yourself. You do not believe your product can solve a problem. And if you're working at a company

and you're selling a product that you don't believe in, leave, go do something you believe in. And, you know, twice in this past two weeks, delivery people have come here. One was delivering an outdoor piece of furniture that my wife ordered. The other was delivering a couch that we ordered. We got off Facebook marketplace and we had a company move the couch. Two different times. Two different guys. four different guys came to our house. And I helped them put the couch in, told them where it goes. And, you know, we struck up a conversation. One had been in the military, one had dropped out of college. I went and got my book. And I said, listen, I didn't go to, I didn't go to college either. They're looking at my house going, you didn't go to college? I go, no, I didn't go to college.

I learned what was in this book. I'm going to give this book to you. I want you to learn what is in this book. If you learn what is in this book, you can really grow a business if you provided the right opportunity. I gave the book to them. When you, when you are selling things that you believe so much in that you really just want to give them away, you found the right thing to sell. What I tell my salespeople is selling is simply the clear articulation of how you can solve somebody's problem. That's it. It is not convincing somebody to give me their money or tricking them into giving their money. It's clearly articulating what you have created and the problem that it solves. And then if people want to buy it, they buy it.

If they don't want to buy it, they don't want to buy it. I really don't care. What I care about is whether I clearly articulate the problem that it solves. If you don't sell, you do not believe you can solve problems. You don't. Or you don't believe that the problem you solve is actually worth bothering somebody. And let me tell you something. If you don't believe that your idea is worth bothering somebody for, you will work for somebody

who thinks their idea is worth it. Guaranteed. So get over it. Let's get out there and solve people's problems. Some of my favorite sales professionals I worked with literally would say, I feel so strongly about this that I would be doing you a disservice to not bring this up to you. And I thought, and they meant it to their core. And I can tell you, too. I'll tell you, I haven't felt that way about some of my books. You know, it's a spiritual memoir. It's a great story. I think it's well written. and it's kind of fun, entertaining, but I don't want to bother you about it, right? This book, your kid's going to go $50,000 in debt. I want you to just know about this stuff before they choose to do it.

Before you choose to do this, your family, just read this. Maybe there's a way around it. I agree. It's a disservice not to tell somebody. That's a big burden, and I don't think you got to lift it. Love it, Don. Just so people know, I have probably three and a half more pages of notes that we did not cover. So sometimes they covered the book in there. No, we did. We covered a fraction of your book in this conversation.

Yeah, we covered some of 10 entries. They're actually 60. Right. Yeah. So there's a lot in there. There's a lot in there. So I just want to say thank you one for writing it and for your team to send it over so I could prepare for this. I love our conversations. I've been a big follower of your work now since I started researching for our first conversation, which was four and a half years ago. So, Ryan, I'm grateful. I'm really, really grateful. I hope. And congrats on your success, too. Thank you. I have a number of friends in Nashville. I just spoke with one a week ago. I can't wait to get down there. I'd love to. Let me know. We've got, Betsy and I built a house. And then we're building a big barn event space behind the house.

And we're building a guest house on a hill. You get your own golf cart. Stay with us. All right, man. I appreciate that. And I'll take you up on that. And the book again is called Business Made Simple 60 Days to Master of Leadership Sales Marketing. execution and more highly recommend people get it's really good like like like the things that don puts out so don't thanks again man and certainly i i plan to continue our dialogue as we both progress man i love it thanks ryan all right thanks don't by now by bye donald miller is one of those people who adds maximum value in a relatively short period of time we spoke for about an hour and you know i have pages of notes of actionable takeaways things to implement into my life to

make me better in the marketplace. A few of the key takeaways, the characteristics of a value-driven professional. They see themselves as an economic product on the open market. They are obsessed with getting people a strong return on the investment made in them. As he says, if you know how to make people money, you will make a lot of money. Then they have a bias towards action. They don't let ideas die on the money. the vine be known as someone who is action oriented and gets things done they also see themselves

as a hero not a victim how do you position yourself as a victim or a hero how do you talk about yourself as though you have control or not in your life do you believe that you are responsible for your failures and or success or not. Don said the biggest transformation in his life came when he switched his mindset from being a victim to a hero. And then I appreciated when he shared his personal guiding principles of get up early, write and say after you, right? It's important for him to wake up before the craziness of the day, to have his creative

time where he writes and then to remember to get outside of his tunnel vision. and say it's not only about me and say after you. And that's what he's all about. I want to say thank you once again for continuing to spread the word and telling a friend or two. You should listen to The Learning Leader Show. It will help you become a more effective leader. And because you do that and because you write a review on Apple Podcasts and rate the show hopefully five stars, you continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait. Awesome, man. Thanks. That was fun. I mean, I literally, we could go for three or four hours.

I know that's not what's not we're going to do. I love to keep this rolling, man, because I just love the way you're able to tell your story. Not surprisingly, it brings each point to life. It makes it, I think, great for audio. Well, thanks. And I'm serious about that invitation. Let me know about a week in advance. Yeah. And if you write a book, release a book, we'd love to do a little book release gathering at the barn. That's what we built it for. Yeah. Again, that's happening to my second one. Actually, I'm working on right now. So definitely I will. Good luck. I hope it tricks you into finishing it. It will. I got to get it done. All right. Thanks, Dawn. See you later. All right. Bye.