The Mindset Mentor - Ep 73 - Interview w/ My First Mentor

Episode Date: February 5, 2016

In this episode I interview my very first mentor from when I was 19. We cover a ton of different mindset topics from taking unconditional responsibility of your life, the power of dreaming and how questions we ask ourselves determine our future. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is a podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast

starts now. Welcome to the episode. Today's episode is with my very first mentor from when I was 19 years old and one of the main people that really changed my life to be what it is today and took me from a crazy party kid into someone who actually became responsible and one of the top sales reps and managers in a company. And just a couple things that we talk about. We talk about taking unconditional responsibility of your life. He also talks about questions that we ask ourselves and how questions we ask ourselves will actually determine our realities. And we talk a good amount about dreaming as well as creating a company culture or creating culture in a relationship and also a family as well. So

I'm so excited to bring this episode to you. So without further ado, John Berghoff. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. My name is Rob Dial. And I am super excited today because the one guest that I wanted to get out on my podcast out of all guests is actually on and that is my original personal coach when I was 19 years old. His name is John Berghoff, and he was the youngest person in the history of Cutco's 60-year history, I believe it was at the time, to hit Hall of Fame. He made his first $100,000 in income at 17 years old as a high school senior Grew a company from $40 million to almost $200 million in three years. Runs ultra marathons. He did 330 miles in eight and a half days.

And like I said, he was my personal coach when I was 19. I was a naive party boy that partied and surfed and didn't go to class. I never made any real money, never did any reading. And I would say it was probably one of the, probably the biggest turning point in my life was to get him as my actual coach, which I actually paid as a 19 year old, quite a bit of money just to have him as a coach. And I think that it paid off immensely to have somebody that, that coached me and never read anything like that. And he got me into reading and really completely changed my life. And I remember the first book that you told me to read was the five major pieces to the life puzzle, which was by Jim Rohn,

which I just gave to my girlfriend the other day too. And it's still highlighted and everything inside of it. But he's also a father at this point. He's got three kids and his youngest son, his name is Kaizen, correct? That's right. It's Kaizen, which is... I just started a fitness company a few months ago and tried to get Kaizen somewhere in there in the fitness brand, but couldn't to get the name in there because I love the idea of it. And I learned the idea of it from you. And it's basically Kai is, I believe the Japanese word for change and then Zen is good. So it's just the constant never ending improvement, which shows that, you know, if you're going to name your son that, then you must be someone who really loves constant never ending improvement. That's

for sure. And also at this point in time, he's actually a coach for really high-level entrepreneurs and just started a company called the Flourishing Leadership Institute. Is that the correct name as well? Yeah. It's a mouthful. We just call it FLY, F-L-I. FLY. Okay. And currently, in your first year, your guys are going to go and actually do over a million dollars in business, which is pretty incredible for your first year. But with all of that, I want to introduce you to my good friend, John Berghoff. John, how are you? Rob, thanks for the intro, man. I have such a variety of feelings hearing that intro. You brought me back years and years and years. And then I'm hearing it, I'm thinking, oh man, I'm still a naive punk like you were. Hopefully your audience figures that out before

we're all done. Yeah, I think we all are. So let me ask you this. There's a lot of questions. There's a lot of things that I know that thinking back to having you on the podcast and thinking, you know, what was my life like before John Berghoff came into it? And how was I before, you know, I started doing all of these coaching and having these weekly calls and actually having to make myself uncomfortable and go through these personal changes. Let me ask you, before you became a coach for myself and for others as well, take me back to your Cutco years when you were a kid, 17 years old, just starting as a sales rep, learning and improving. What do you feel some of the biggest things that you learned from that were? I know Dan Cassetta was your first manager and mentor as well. What kind of stuff did he teach you as a 17 year old that really, at that point, if you felt kind of took a turning point in your

life? Yeah, yeah. Well, I should probably point out that at that point in my life, I wasn't this like rock star human being. In fact, I was really struggling socially and emotionally, you know, and I won't even get into all the reasons why. I think everybody can relate to in life, we have seasons and there's times when we have low seasons. And so what's really interesting is you ask about, you know, when I was 17, I started selling Cutco and you gave that wonderful bio earlier, but you know, people don't maybe don't hear within that is lots of, lots of struggles of all kinds. And when I found Cutco, it was at a low point, interestingly. And what I was really attracted to Rob was a couple of one was and there's certain things

that that just can't be explained like how is it that Dan was for me my first manager right you can call that fortunate or lucky and you know that was that was just destiny I don't know how that happened but you know the first thing that I got from it was a mentor, right? And when I look back over, and that was, I don't know, 17, 18 years ago, when I look back and I, across my life, I realized I was having a conversation with someone the other day and they were asking me a similar question, like, Hey, how'd you get to where you are? And, and I, I told them about Dan and all the lessons that Dan taught me. And in this friend of mine, he goes, man, he goes, that makes me feel better knowing you had a mentor, like, like that's how you've done it.

And then and then I paused, Rob. And I said, my friend's name was Jeremy. I said, Jeremy, I said, you know what I just realized? I said, when I think about it, I've had 10 Dan's in my life. And we both had this kind of moment of shock and awe, like, wow, that's profound. And I had never really thought about it. But Rob, I'll tell you, that's, you know, when you ask about my first mentor, the first thing that comes to mind is realizing how important many different mentors have been for me and just a

willingness and an openness, knowing when it's the right time to find someone and when it's the right time to listen and to be a student. That was a big, when I look back, I see how important that was. And then in terms of like specific lessons I got, there were many, but I think one that jumps out is, is really about the importance of taking, being unconditionally responsible for what happens in our lives. And I think this is what I loved about sales. It was like, well, I don't get paid to show up to work. I get paid to produce a result. And there was something like primal about that. Like, wow, it's a, this is so real. You know, it's like, if I do a good job, I'm going to get rewarded. And if I don't, I don't get rewarded.

And I, something just, I liked that. And part of the culture was, look, if you want to do well, here, here's a simple formula. You'll do well if you improve yourself as a person or more eloquently, Dan would would say you know your income seldom exceeds your level of personal growth and so i guess that's another big thing that i got from dan is um he had a he had a certain humility and it's not a humility of him walking around claiming that he doesn't know what he's doing or um no it was a humility in that he wasn't afraid to send me to others to get answers from day one. He's like, look, you, you should, you know, go learn everything you can. He wasn't saying I'm going to teach you everything you could learn. And he even invited coaches into

our office. In fact, it's really crazy when you talk about the story, when you were 17 or however old you were, and I coached you, I don't know if you know this, Robin. I don't know how many people know this part of my story, but when I was 17, we had an Anthony Robbins coach come give a talk in our office to a bunch of Cutco reps and I signed up on the spot. I spent thousands of dollars. And so I was just so passionate about learning and that just became, something was ignited that was a lifelong curiosity that eventually became a lifelong value that I think is just so, so critical. And I can't tell you, the more I connect with my mentors today and people I admire and I learn from, the more I notice that an authentic, legitimate, unending, unwavering curiosity is so fundamental to creating an amazing life for ourselves and for others through our work.

So it's a long answer, but those are some of the things that came to me. By the way, I have to say this because usually I don't leave this out and I don't want to leave it out here. One of the things that Dan used to always teach was that life doesn't get easier, our skills get better. And that's a simple concept. But when we reflect on it, you know, it reminds me still today that when I'm struggling in my business or emotionally or with my family, I have to remind myself like, look, life doesn't get easier. I have to take

unconditional responsibility for who I become. And that's how my world is going to change. So those are some big ones that come out. I think about when I go back 17. No, that's really good. And I like what you said as far as the life doesn't get easier, your skills get better. Because I have this interesting addiction to buying Amazon books, books on Amazon. So it's like a flood. I get at least one to two every single week that come in. And somebody was talking to me and they're like, my girlfriend's like, yeah, he just loves to read and all this stuff. And I think it was like 40 books that I read last year. And it was kind of a breakthrough in my mind. And I actually said, you know what? I've actually

come to realize I don't like reading books. I actually hate reading, but I hate reading less than I love acquiring knowledge to get better. And I know that in order for me to get to where I want to get, which is constantly changing, constantly getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I have to acquire the knowledge in order to become the person that makes that money or that talks to that many people or that can impact those many people's lives. I can't do it being the person that I am today. I constantly have to get better. And it's not that I love reading because I actually hate it. And I feel most people do hate reading, but I love acquiring knowledge more. And I love the fact that I know that if I read those books, I will eventually become the person that I want to be.

Yeah, that's awesome. So, and you said unconditional responsibility. And I've said this, and this is interesting, because I specifically remember a call that I had with you when I was 19 years old, and I was sitting in my car, and we had our call. And I was still at the point where I was, you know, 19 years old, showing up late to calls and all of this stuff. And I was still at the point where I was 19 years old, showing up late to calls and all of this stuff. And what you said to me, and it stuck, and it's actually something I've said in multiple episodes, is you were like, listen, I'm kind of disappointed the way this is going. I really want to help you out, but I feel like you're not taking complete

responsibility for your side of this equation of our partnership here. And one thing that you said to me is that you need to treat your life as if you're the CEO of your life. If you show up late to calls, you don't need to make any excuses because it is essentially your fault no matter what happened. If a business fails, it's the CEO's fault. If you fail, it is also your fault as well, no matter what else happens. And you really got the mindset to take all of the excuses out. So in that case, when you're coaching somebody or when you have somebody that you're speaking to, most people have excuses.

And it's like the phrase says that excuses are like buttholes. Everyone's got one and they all stink. So in that case, if somebody is out there and they're new into personal development, they're trying to make changes in their life and they just keep making excuses, how do you help them get over that hurdle or what tips could you give them to do so? Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess excuses are reasons. And I would just say, choose some new reasons, right? Like there are reasons why things aren't working we'll pick some reasons why they will and you know reframe how we view it I would

also say don't for some people listening stop hanging around people who love to make excuses right uh depending on the stage that your audience is at in their lives and in their journey you know for some folks they need to do some cleaning out of just their environment, right? In some cases, that's people who aren't setting examples, you know, the saying we become like those we hang out with. So for some people, that's important. But I think, Rob, at the end of the day, it comes down to realizing that when I say unconditional responsibility, I'm not saying I can affect the weather, right? Like, you know, here I am in Hudson, Ohio. It's like 10 degrees outside today. And, you know, sometimes in life things happen and it feels like the weather, right?

It's like, well, how it becomes easy to say, well, I couldn't, I can't affect how that person does this or how this works or this, that. But what I find is that when I stop looking at what I can't control, because it is not true to say I can actually control everything in my life. So that's not unconditional responsibility. Unconditional responsibility is choosing to take ownership over how we respond in our moment by moment situation. Right. So just taking the weather as an example. So I love to run. I love to be in nature. I love to trail run. And we live up against several hundred acres of beautiful trails and hills.

And some people would say, well, oh, what are you going to do when it's 10 degrees outside? Well, I had a coach a long time ago. He was actually a motorcycling coach of mine. And he used to say, there's no such thing as bad weather, just poor preparation. And you put on the right gear and the weather becomes irrelevant. Well, same is true today. I go running at night sometimes in five degrees because I got the right gear. But that's just instead of letting something that I can't control impact what I'm going to do, I ask myself, well, what can I do? How can I start taking ownership over how I respond to

any moment by moment situation? And Rob, the last thing I'll say about this unconditional responsibility is I think I often hear people talking about freedom. And I feel like sometimes, and I don't know if this is like an American cultural thing, I don't know what it is, but there's this, because there's this individualistic nature we have in our country and people want to be entrepreneurs and people say, I want freedom in my life. And what's interesting is the way I hear people often talking about freedom, I realize that they're often thinking about it externally. Like, I want to be able to go wherever I can with whoever I want, do whatever I want to do.

And while that sounds like a nice fantasy, even myself at the place I'm at with my business, if I just woke up and did exactly what I wanted to do with who I wanted to do, well, my business might actually fall apart. So freedom from an external perspective sometimes is a bit of a distraction. And when I think about unconditional responsibility and real freedom to me, real freedom is the ability to make a decision to take an action that is in alignment with what I value, right? At the end of the day, that's freedom. Freedom is, am I going to behave in a way that aligns with my values? Because that is something that I can do anytime I want, regardless of what's happening

in my life. But frankly, no matter where I am in my business, I might not ever be able to own 20 houses, six airplanes, and hang out with all my best friends every night and play the bongos, right? So I just want to say this about this whole idea of unconditional responsibility and freedom. It's not about, hey, I'm striving to change everything in my world and have control over everything. It's, I just want to control my responses and if I'm behaving in alignment with what I think is important, right? I love that. So let's say that I know a lot of people that listen.

I get emails and they say I'm brand new to motivation, to personal growth, to self-development. I'm brand new to all of this stuff. And the first thing I think obviously, like we said, is unconditional responsibility. And I'm going to kind of put you on the spot here. If somebody's like, okay, I'm going to take the unconditional responsibility. What is the next best step for them to take a control and actually making meaningful changes in their lives after saying, okay, everything that happens, no more excuses. I'm going to take responsibility for how I react to everything. What would the next step be after that? Yeah, that's a great question. Great question, Rob. Thanks. So I'll tell you what it is for me. And I can't claim this is the best next step for all

your listeners. But, you know, the next step for me is to take ownership over my thoughts. And the reason I say take ownership over my thoughts versus my emotions is because frankly, I've been trying to figure this stuff out for like 18 years. My wife and everyone will tell you, I don't know how to control my emotions. I know how to work my way into working with them effectively. But I would start with, as a good next step, is taking ownership over my thoughts. And let me give everyone a tool that I like to use to do that, is to create questions to guide my thinking. And this is not a complicated idea. It's very simple. Anybody can apply it at any given moment. And let me give you a real world example, Rob, of if you had a listener right now

who they have, and let's just imagine that they happen to be in business or starting a business, and maybe something isn't working, right? And so someone might be listening to this thinking, well, this area of my life or my business hasn't been working. So yeah, John, how am I supposed to take unconditional responsibility? I think I buy into this. What do I do? Well, the first step would be to design a question so that whatever our focus is or our thinking is as productive as possible. It's going to give us the greatest possible outcome. So here's an example. If you had someone listening and actually let's try and use an example that might apply to even more people.

Let's say somebody wants, they're not happy with their health or their fitness, right? So for a lot of times when we have an area of our life that we're not happy with or we're struggling with it, what happens is we have a self-perpetuating internal dialogue about this area. Oftentimes our self-talk is very degrading. I'll just keep commenting to myself that I'm struggling and I'm no good. And what happens is this internal self-dialogue, it just repeated a few times with any level of intensity or emotion, it strengthens the neural pathways in our minds so that having that thought again actually becomes habitual.

And then that's dangerous. And that's how we get into these personal patterns that we can't figure out why we can't break out of these patterns. It's actually a really simple explanation because every time you have a thought repeatedly with any level of intensity or emotion, imagine taking a shovel and you're digging a trench in your mind and you're making it easier for that thought to pass back and forth through that pathway, right? So that's really what's going on in our brains. So one of the things that we do in our work today with large groups, but it works with individuals really well, is we start by saying, look, if something's not working, we've got to change our internal dialogue. How do we do that? Well, let's shift our thinking. And the fastest way I've found to do that is create a new question.

Because oftentimes, Rob, we don't realize it, but we're unconsciously asking ourselves questions like, you know, why did this happen to me? Or how, you know, how out of shape am I? Or how bad is this? Or how much does my life suck? We might not consciously be asking that, but our thoughts might be actually reflecting an answer to those questions. So what do you do? Your question is, John, someone's taken unconditional responsibility. They want to improve their fitness. So what I would do is instead of letting their dialogue be driven by this phrase, you know, my fitness is broken or my fitness is not working because that might be what you're thinking about all the time. Instead, what I would do is I would, what's called flipping the question, right? Or flip the conversation.

So instead of having this phrase that's dominating your thinking, says my fitness isn't working, I would flip that around and I would turn it into a future-focused positive question. And here's an example. It could be anything like, when was a time when I was exceptional with my fitness?

What did that look like? What did that feel like? And what was I doing, right? is exceptional with my fitness. What did that look like? What did that feel like? And you know, what was I doing? Right now that what that does is it starts to move us into a place of strength, right? So when was I strong in this area? Now you might have someone who's listening going, I've never been strong. Okay. So if that's true, then what I would say is what could it look like to be exceptional in this area? Right. What could it look like? How would I think?

How would I behave? Right. Who would I spend my time with? And then, you know, if you need help, you could say, what does exceptional fitness look like when I look around outside of me? Right. And so, Rob, here's what happens when we change the question. And this might sound like an overly simplistic answer, but I'm going to tell you, this works in complex business problems

with 50 people in the room trying to set a strategy for a company where instead of them saying, hey, our sales suck and we need to fix this, I say, look, that's the old way of thinking, of fixing what's broken, right? The new way to do it is you start with where you're strong and or you say, what does exceptional look like?

And then you study success instead of studying what's broken, which is what happens if we don't fix our questions. And Rob, I can't tell you how many times I'll have people pair in partners. I'll say, okay, talk for five minutes about what's broken. And they talk. And when they're done, I say, tell me about your conversation. Usually it was focused on the past. It was focused on blame and the emotions were depressing and it was unproductive. Then I say, okay, flip it around. What would it look like to be exceptional in this area?

What has it looked like when we were? They have that conversation. Then I ask them, what happened? They go, well, it was all focused on the future. It was all focused on solutions. It was really uplifting. The last thing I'll say about this, Rob, is someone's listening. They want to take

responsibility. Choose questions that are empowering. What could I do that could make today great? What am I grateful for right now in this moment? How can I serve this moment or those in front of me even more than I already am, right? And there's some technical things I just did there. By saying even more, I'm presupposing I'm already doing a good job, right? Instead of telling myself, hey, John, you've been sucking at this, so now how can I get better, right? So ask great questions. And the last thing I wanted to say about this, Rob, is that when we change the questions that we bring to a situation, our questions are fateful.

What does that mean? It means that the moment you change the question, your destiny is changed. Before the answers arrive, your destiny is changed. Before the answers arrive, your future is changed. Why? Because you've now put on a new lens through which you're going to see the world. And when you have a new lens, everything looks different, right? And you can now operate differently. So that to me, that's a good first step. No, I love that. And I think it is really good with, especially with health, you said some people might have, you know, with some people who have gone to the gym and they have been able to get really good sessions in and they leave and they're sweating. They have all the endorphins. They're

like, man, I did so well. They could put themselves in that position back, being back there again. And remember how good that felt for people who have never been there say, what could it look like? And that kind of reminds me of, I know you've heard you talk about it before, is developing the habit of dreaming. So dreaming what your body could look like or what your future could look like. And I know that's something that you love to talk about. So I think that kind of flows in perfectly with it. So could you talk about the habit of dreaming and what you think, as far as people trying to change their life, how that would actually help them become better and make changes as well? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's such a,

it's such a wonderful topic. And the reason why is because, you know, we know this, this isn't, this isn't a theory. We know that human beings move towards the images that we hold in our minds. that human beings move towards the images that we hold in our minds. We know that. So whether we call it dreaming or goal setting, it's really all about creating positive images of the future and whatever we can do to sustain those images. The longer we can sustain them, the more vividly we can sustain them, the more likely they become reality. And we know that that is not an idea or a theory. We know that it's true, that when we hold on to an image, we move towards it. And so, yeah, I actually take

that. I wouldn't say I take it seriously, but I'm very disciplined in thinking about the future. In fact, just when I look around my office and I look, I've got a lot of different kind of symbols and signals and reminders to dream and think about the future. But one of the things that I think is important, Rob, is for everyone to recognize that when it comes to dreaming or thinking about the future, it's important to do it with no constraints. It's important to dream without stopping and saying, well, but I can't do it because I don't have this, or I don't have enough money or enough friends or enough people to sell to or enough ideas, or I don't have the determination. I think

what's important when we dream and think about the future, and it's very difficult to think without constraints because we often are simply reflecting based on our memories of our past. So in fact, Rob, one of the things that I've learned about dreaming about the future, and this really has a lot to do with creativity, is I think there's often a misconception about what it means to be creative, which is what dreaming and goal setting should be. It should be an act of creativity. I should be creating a plan or a vision that has never been created before, right? If it's not, it's not inspiring. If it's not inspiring, it's not going to keep us going. And I think sometimes, Rob, we want that vision of the future or a sense of purpose to be something that's just going to show up like, okay, if I pray or if I meditate or if I listen to enough

of Rob's podcast episodes, it's going to hit me. And here's the interesting thing about how the brain works is that when we are entering into the act of trying to create in our minds, what a lot of people don't realize is that all we're really doing is we're tapping into the act of trying to create in our minds, what a lot of people don't realize is that all we're really doing is we're tapping into the same exact places in our minds where our memories reside. And so that's why most people may not realize, but when they're trying to dream about the future or imagine a better future, sometimes it's hard to do because the only place that they can draw from are their memories, right? Or memories or recollections of other examples they've seen in their lives. So one of the things that I've been

taught about, whether it's strategic planning for business or just dreaming personally, is the importance of constantly, continually, proactively going out and looking for examples, proactively going out and looking for examples, models, we call them like that of, you know, people who live a certain way, businesses that run a certain way, look for as many examples as possible. And it doesn't mean I look at a person and go, well, I want to live their entire life. No, it might mean I look at a person and I go, there's one little thing about that person that I want to have that become a part of me. And then I look at somebody else. Like, like I look at my friend Hal Elrod and I go, I look at Hal's speed of execution and I want that to become a part of me. Right. I don't have to want everything else about him. I might not even agree with everything else about him. And then I look at my friend,

John Vroman. And I think I want his authentic love for people. I want to, I want to take some of that and put that in me. Right.. Then I look at my wife and it's like I want her compassion. I just want a piece of that, put it inside of me. The thing is, the more I proactively look at other people or I look at businesses or I look at lifestyles, and the more I draw from lots. My business right now, I have 20 different businesses that I've said, here's pieces of each of these that I want to be emulating. And there's no constraints. I mean, it's businesses from Uber to Airbnb, because I want to model aspects of their business model, to Apple and the customer experience, to the coffee shop that's right below me and the uniqueness of the culture they have, right? So I'm saying all this because if you have someone

listening and they want to dream about their future, they want to set exciting goals, the best thing they can do to help them to really think outside the box is to literally walk out of wherever they're at and look around, open their eyes, read, look for examples, and realize that the more information they take in, the more examples they take in, the more stories they take in, the more people they meet, the more that will inform and elevate whatever they can create in their mind. And when you hear everything I'm saying, it's really not that complicated. And it's kind of common sense too. So I don't know if this makes any sense at all. It might have nothing to do with what you want to talk about. No, I think it's great because the fact that as you're

saying it, I'm like, damn, I don't know if I learned this from you at one point in time, but I feel like I do this all the time where it's like, you know, I want to be successful in this. And so I watch this person's interview and how they came up and, you know, like for instance, music is a big concentration for me this year. And so I look at, you know, different people like Ed Sheeran, who's very successful and what did he do and how did he kind of go through all of these ways? And it makes sense because I might not have the success that he has. And I might have those memories, as you say, of me getting up on stage and me messing up the first few times and all of those things.

But I can look at somebody else and say, well, this person did it. This is how they did it. And I can remember that and go, well, I might not be there yet. But I know that they also struggled because I've heard about their struggles. So I'm just in the same situation. I'm on the same path that they are. I just have to try not to stray away from that path. Yeah, that's great.

And the thing that I love about everything that we've talked about is that there's no strategic, this is how you do it. It's all mindset, which is, I love, I know you love as well, where we talk about unconditional responsibility. That happens in your mind. Questions that everyone who listens asks themselves, that's in their mind. And then dreaming. All of this stuff is, it's not even out in the physical form. It's stuff that happens between their ears, which I love. And I love talking about these types of things. I could talk for hours, I feel like.

The next thing that I'm curious about, because you mentioned a couple of times, is your new business. And I know that you're working with large groups, really high-level entrepreneurs, people who are CEOs and business owners. And when we were talking before we started recording, you were saying how a lot of these things that people pay thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars to go through these courses with you. And my listeners are going to get some of this for free, which is awesome. How does this deal with the stuff that you teach these business owners and how to run these businesses and how to make large changes? What could you take from that and also put into somebody else's life that could help them make changes as well? Yeah. Well, what's interesting is that this whole idea that we're talking about of using positive questions and creating a positive image of the future, that's a, really interesting about culture and how that impacts

organizations. But the reason I'm going to share this, because your listeners, it doesn't matter if they have a team of people they lead, there's something that we've discovered that applies to all of us. And it's the power of dialogue. And I'll share what I mean by that. People often ask, because we're asked to go in, and one of the things that we've become known for is we create culture in a matter of days. Most companies, they just never figure it out. Anyone who's been to our Best Year Ever Blueprint event, they may not have thought of it this way, but we create culture in three days. That's something that most people have never experienced. We help but we create culture in three days. That's like something that most people

never experienced. Well, we help companies to create culture and we don't do that by telling them what their culture should look like. We do it by guiding dialogue. And so let me go back thousands of years. And if you ask the question, like, how did culture, how did religion, how did society continue itself long before there was written history, long before there was social media to tell all of our friends what's going on, long before there was the ability for us to chat on this podcast? How is it that cultures sustained themselves? How did they continue to evolve? And they did it through really two simple ways by telling stories and drawing pictures. And so just kind of an interesting side note,

we, you know, so what is telling stories and drawing pictures? Well, if you've heard of, you know, having a vision board, right? When we go into companies, we literally have them solve their problems by designing solutions as pictures or we go further and actually have them

design physical representations of the future solutions. But the other thing is through storytelling, Rob. And I share this with you because when people ask me, hey, like what is it that creates the culture within an organization? Or just think about if you're listening, you know, within your friends or your family or wherever you work, like what is it that creates the culture? And sometimes we are credited as these like exponentially fast culture creators. And I always tell our clients, I say, let me tell you something for a second here. There is no such thing as a person that creates culture. That is impossible.

What we do and what a great manager or leader can do and what any of your listeners can do within any of their relationships is create a space for a certain culture to emerge. So one of the ways that we do that is by guiding the dialogue. And let me tell you, what does that really mean? So if you were to ask me the question, how do you evaluate the culture of a family, of a friendship, of a company, I would tell you it's easy to figure it out. It's not by looking on the walls. It's not by looking at their website. It has nothing to do with any of that. The way you figure out the culture is you listen to people's conversations. Because when people talk to each other, all of our worlds are created relationally, right? So

in other words, when people are talking with each other, in the present moment, as they communicate, as they tell stories to each other about their lives in that moment, that's when and where culture is created. And so really what we do in our work is we create a hyper-presence around how are we talking with each other? How are we guiding these conversations? Because at the end of the day, the conversation is the relationship. The relationships are how everything gets executed. And so what does this have to do with individuals? Well, you know, it starts with the dialogue with

ourselves. But one of the things we've learned that I found interesting that applies to anybody is just to be super present to what are the conversations that I have with other people? And where do those conversations go? Like a great question to ask is to think about different people in your lives and ask yourself, if I was talking with this person for five minutes, where would we probably be? And how do you, how do I feel about that? Do I really feel good about that? Like what, what percentage of our interactions would I consider positive versus negative discussions? Even if it's not positive or negative between each other, are we talking positively or negatively about other people or other things or situations? And so being hyper present to our conversations with others is something that we've learned working with large

groups that I've started to discover. It works with two people versus one person, but it works with two people just to be super conscious of that. Yeah, I love that because I know one thing that I learned from being in Kutka for so long was that it's kind of a bubble of positivity. And once you get out of that bubble sometimes and you start talking to other people, you realize that there's a lot of people that they've never learned this type of stuff. They've never learned of, you know, that their thoughts and their words are actual physical things that they put out into the universe. And sometimes I'll get around people and they'll tell me about how much they're worrying about something or I'll bring it back to this. There's a lot of times where I'll go to places and I'll start talking with somebody and

then I'll try to end the conversation as quick as possible. And my girlfriend will ask me what happened. And I'll just immediately say something like it was too negative. And I didn't want to put my mindset into that mindset. Or they keep saying I can't all the time. Or, you know, there's the people that say I never have money or I don't have enough money to do that. Or I can't because I don't have money. And then the funny thing is two years down the road, three years down the road, they still never have money. And the reason why is because they just keep saying to themselves that they never have money. And so I think that, like you said, it starts with internal dialogue, positive or negative, but also the dialogue they say to everyone else as well. It's big. I love that. And you kind of spoke a little bit about the

best year ever blueprint. And I know that when I went last year, well, actually 2016 now. So when I went in 2014, the very first one, it was a lot like a Cutco conference. It was stuff that I had missed. I had been out of the company for five years. And there's a lot of stuff that you took from that, but there's also a lot of stuff that you guys did on your own. And it was at that conference where I was like, the past four or five years, I have not been living like I was before, where it was like, I was constantly improving, constantly trying to get better. And so this last year, I'll give you an idea, John. In 2014, I think I read maybe three books. And then I went to your event and I was like, enough's enough. I'm ready to make passive income. I'm ready to change my life. I'm ready to go after being a musician, like I've said that I've wanted to, and just kind of put it on the back burner.

So I went from reading three or four books in 2014 to reading, I think it was about 40 books in 2015, because I needed to have that real quick change. And going to that made me realize, damn, there's a lot of stuff I really need to change. I know that that person's still inside. I know that I can still go out and kick ass anytime that I need to. But I've just kind of been out in the corporate world, been lazy, and haven't really had reasons to change. So I know that you said with this year that you had some massive breakthroughs. So it's now still January.

And some people can still have their New Year's resolutions. And I know that they're working towards them. What are some things that you could pull from the Best Year Ever Blueprint to help people with the, you know, 2016 now that they're still in their first month? Yeah, that's a, wow, that's a big question. I know, you could probably talk for hours about it. Yeah. If you were to pull a couple of things and say, hey, you know, these were some of the

breakthroughs that we saw the most and this is how we really helped people the most in this situation. Yeah. Well, so there was a few different themes around the event. And this was, this was in San Diego, about 330 people or so. And, and one of the things that we chose to experiment with this year is we really, so I'm going to talk about just one aspect of the event here. We really believed in the importance of sharing with our audience our beliefs around purpose and what we believe purpose really is. And how do we actually arrive at an answer that we're comfortable with around what is the purpose of what I'm doing right now. And then to go a step further, I think for some folks in the audience,

they probably started to think about how do I integrate this. There's a lot of entrepreneurs there, like 80%, 90%. How do I actually integrate a sense of purpose into my work? And I'll share with you how this theme originated, at least for this event. For us, you know, in the work that I do, I really believe, Rob, that one of the biggest problems in business, and this is, the data is empirically proven that this is maybe the greatest inefficiency in all of business, at least in our country, as far as we know, is the level of disengagement of people at work. Entrepreneurs, people that work for others, people are disengaged. And I think the biggest

research study that's ever been done was just a year ago. And they found that really seven to eight out of 10 people are disengaged in their work. And a lot of people aren't surprised when they heard that. And here's the irony is that in a parallel survey that Gallup did, they also did the largest survey ever done on happiness. And they basically went around the world and they said, what is it that matters more to you in life than anything else? And you know what people said? The answer wasn't, I want to be happy.

It wasn't, I want to have a trillion dollars. It wasn't, I want to have a hot girlfriend or boyfriend. The answer is, what I want more than anything else is I want work that is meaningful. And so when you think about, for some people that might be a surprising answer. But when you think about it, it's really not. We spend more of our waking hours working than doing anything else. Right. So how ironic is that, that the thing people want more than anything is meaningful work and they're not getting it. Yeah. And so one of the things that we've found is that there's a

whole sea change. There's a movement taking place in the world. And there's, there's a lot of trends that are pointing to this as a potentially significant change that could be very positive. And it's around the concept of purpose. And it's simply the idea that we're moving into a time and a place where people are going to demand, they're going to really want and need a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their work. Some of this is driven by the rise of millennials in the workforce. And so you asked about the best driver blueprint. Well, one of the things that we wanted to bring to that audience was our belief that being connected to a higher purpose and integrating being purpose-driven with personal growth was super

important. So let me tell you how we did that. We not only did we talk about it and have some exercises around it. And I'll give you the real quick framework that we share at that audience. And it's inspired largely by a guy named Aaron Hurst, who wrote The Purpose Economy, as well as a couple other thought leaders in this area. But it's essentially the idea that we all can find purpose or meaning one of three different ways. And by the way, there's a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings around purpose. Like one of them is that our purpose in our lives or in our work is a revelation. Like we said earlier, like I wake up and all of a sudden I know what I'm supposed to do. I don't really think that's how it works.

Another misconception is that to have a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment and to really wake up jumping out of bed, that means I'm supposed to support a cause or a charity of some kind. And that's not necessarily true either. In fact, it's interesting. There's that same survey that asked people about, you know, how engaged are you? Well, even people working at nonprofits are disengaged. So that just because you're serving a charity or cause, it doesn't mean that that's going to give you fulfillment. So what we've really come to understand about purpose and meaning and fulfillment in our work, and I think it's true just everywhere in our lives, is that it comes from three different places. And it really, it depends on the individual of where

we can find the most meaning or purpose in our lives. For some of us, it's a combination of all three. But Rob, for some, we find purpose or meaning on a personal level. So in other words, we find purpose by looking at our situation and asking ourselves questions that make it meaningful in a personal way. So as an example, does this inspire me because of who I'm going to become as a person, because of the confidence it's going to give me, because of how I'm going to evolve, right? These are all about me and myself. And that's great. If that drives me, like if someone's listening and they have a goal and they go through these questions and that's what drives you, it's who you're going

to become. It's how you're going to transform. It's what you're going to overcome. Then that means right now in this moment, you're really driven by something that's personal around the meaning or purpose that you give to what you're doing. You could step to the side and talk to another person who might have the same goal, right? Let's just go back to the whole idea of I want to improve my fitness, right? So for one person, it could be personal. Another person might say, well, it's less about me and it's more about my spouse. I just want a better connection with them.

And maybe it's a combination. I want to feel confident, but it's about my relationships with others, right? In business, it's the difference between, hey, I want to grow my business because of how I'm going to feel versus on a relational level, it's, hey, I want to be successful because of the people that we're helping, because of my team members, my customers, my partners, right? The third level of purpose is what we call societal, which is just if there is something that's bigger than just ourselves or our direct relationships that inspires us. And maybe that is a cause, a mission, an injustice. But the point, Rob, is we taught this at the event. We have people do some exercises where they really think through like, hey, look, you create your purpose. Your purpose has nothing to

do with what you do when you go to work every day. It has to do with how you approach it and how you frame it. Right. And so that was kind with how you approach it and how you frame it, right? And so that was kind of how we got into the idea. But Rob, we took it a step further and we did something that was like a radical experiment at this event. And it was guided by a question. And the question was, how could we revolutionize the live event industry,

like the personal empowerment live event industry, which is an audacious question. But we really thought we were onto something. We said, how could we revolutionize the personal development live event industry? And one of the sub points to that was by integrating purpose into basically the teaching or the event. And so that was our question that guided us for a long time. And we didn't have an answer at first. And then we came up with an answer. We thought, you know what? Here's what we're going to do. We are going to partner with the Front Row Foundation. And for any of your audience that is not aware, the Front Row is a wish organization

that helps individuals that are braving critical health challenges to sit in the front row of the event of their dreams. And oftentimes we bring them with their family and we create a whole day that is a memory of a lifetime for their family. And oftentimes the recipients pass away not long after the experience. So the ripple effect of the benefit, the impact is really about the community around that person. But Rob, one of the other reasons we selected the Front Row Foundation to highlight at the Best Year Ever event is because the Front Row is also all about a philosophy of living life in the Front Row. And we thought, well, that aligns with having your best year ever event is because the front row is also all about a philosophy of living life in the front row. And we thought, well, that aligns with having your best year ever. So here was the crazy idea.

We thought this is an experiment. It might totally bomb. But what we're going to do is we're going to talk about this concept. We're going to talk about our belief that it's not just a feel good way of growing your business or growing yourselves, but it's actually the best way. It's the smartest way. And there's all the data in the world to say if you integrate purpose in everything you do, you will actually perform better. It is the best way to grow yourself or your business. So we advocated for that. And then we decided we were going to try and exemplify it by hosting the Front Row Foundation fundraiser right there Saturday night in the middle of the Best You Ever blueprint. Normally, we would have sent people out into the town to go have dinner,

and we thought this is a risk, right? First of all, they might not even come back into the room for this big celebration because there's a two-hour break to turn the room over and turn it into a cocktail reception. And then we thought, if they do show up, how's it going to work? Are we going to actually raise any money? Everyone here, they, they all, everyone here spent probably a thousand bucks or more on their ticket and travel to get here. So now we're trying to raise money. Are they going to be bothered by that? Well, they weren't. And what ended up happening was people connected. They connected with this idea of, you know what, you know, giving back and making a difference in the world is, is worth integrating into everything that we do. And it doesn't have to be something that we just talk about,

but we could really do it with everyone here in the room. And so we had a fundraiser, Rob, and the biggest fundraiser we'd ever had to date was maybe in the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 range. So we thought, hey, if we top that, that would be awesome. And we raised like $110,000 right there in the middle of a personal growth event, right? And so what that did is that acknowledged for us.

It was an acknowledgement and a confirmation that this principle of, look, connect everything we do to any greater sense of meaning or purpose that we can. And there's something to that. And it was a huge success. We're going to do it again this next year. But I just want to, there's a

few lessons within that. One, it started with a well thought out question long before we had the answer. And two is just reminding people that, look, if you don't feel a sense of fulfillment or meaning or purpose as you think about your goals or approach your goals, then you got to make, you got to do one of two things. You either need to shift your perspective by, by reframing why you're doing what you're doing. That's the starting point. And if that doesn't work, right, then you got to go do something different, right? For most of us, it's not about just change our job, change our career. A lot of people that that is what we do. If we're not happy, we go to these extremes. Like, Oh, I should just, I should do something. I should just, you know,

I should go to Tibet for 40 days. Right. And then, and if it's less than that, it's okay. I should just go work for a different company in the same industry. And I'm saying, no, don't start with these extremes. Start with our, how we view what we're doing, right? Those are last resorts if you're trying to find meaning or purpose, but more likely than not, if I'm not finding meaning or purpose in my life today, I could change everything outside of me. And if I don't change inside of me how I'm viewing what I'm doing, I'm not going to find more meaning or fulfillment.

So it's got to start by asking, hey, how can I reframe the meaning that I give to what I'm doing? How can I make this about my growth or my relationships with others or the impact I'm making on the world and hold on to that and keep asking and reminding myself what those answers are. Cause that purpose, Rob is what gives us fuel. Like that's what moves us through the day. Yeah. That's a damn, that was really good. I love that because it's for most people. It's a, it's hard. It's, it's good because it's what you said is good for entrepreneurs, but I also feel like it could be really good for people who are employees. And they might have something on the side that they're doing or they want to do something on the side.

And, you know, there's always those times when you're going for something that you really want and you get kicked in the face. And you're like, damn, do I really want to keep going? And sometimes, you know, the personal motivation isn't enough or reading isn't enough. You've got to have something inside you that says, this is why I'm going to keep going. Um, and the, the purpose behind it is, is exactly what she used to teach me when I was younger. And that was if the, the why is strong enough, the how will reveal itself. So if your why is that you want to have a purpose and you're going for something bigger,

whatever that might be, whenever you do get kicked in the face or wherever you fall down, whatever happens, when that why is there, your how is eventually going to reveal itself of, okay, this is the steps I need to go to in order to keep pursuing and going to where I want to go. So I love it.

Well, I would love to end on that because I think that is a perfect spot to do so. So I appreciate you. And let me ask you this. How can anybody out there get ahold of you, And let me ask you this. How can anybody out there get a hold of you, your new company, everything that you guys are doing out there? Yeah. I'm laughing because I'm not a good example for someone to follow. If you're looking for, hey, how does somebody grow a business or market themselves? We don't have a website. You can't

find anything about me. And currently, that's by design. That's not an intelligent long-term strategy, but, um, as I was, as I was like, well, how am I going to end this? I don't know if he's got a website. I know he's got, I know he does some other stuff. I know you have the front row foundation, which is what you're a chairman of. So people could definitely go on that website. Yeah. I'm a proud supporter of the front row. So they could check out the front row foundation. Um, but Rob, if you have audience members who are interested, who either currently are professional speakers or trainers or they're aspiring to, or maybe more importantly, if you have anyone in your audience who in their work every single day, they're doing a lot of speaking and presenting in front of groups of all sizes. of speaking and presenting in front of groups of all sizes. We have an event running coming up and apologies if by the time this comes out, we've already sold it out. Actually, technically, we've already sold it out, but we're choosing to let people keep signing up because I think the room we're going to use, we can take a few more. But anyways, it's called the Speaker Trainer

Experience. We did it last fall. We only guaranteed 20 spots. They filled up, we sold 30 spots and then we said, we're done. Uh, we're going to do it again in March in San Diego. And, uh, so I'll tell you what we do at this. We teach people, it's an experiential workshop where we walk people through the process of one, uh, how do you enter an audience members world, which is fundamental to being exceptional at communicating with others? It all starts with having a process. And we have one that's worked really well for our attendees that we teach, and we have them actually experiment with it. And then the next thing we teach at this event is how to organize a message, a communication,

of any length, whether it's a minute or an hour or a week. How do you actually structure and organize how you're going to communicate? And we teach a very specific style of mind mapping that aligns with how the brain works. The way that most people try and organize their thinking, Rob, is significantly ineffective. And it goes against how the brain works. So we actually, and we have everything we teach, they do it in the room, which is great. The next thing we teach at this event is storytelling. And we don't just teach it. What we do is we actually break down and dissect some of the greatest stories or presentations that have ever been given. You can see a lot of them on YouTube. And we dissect them. And then

we have the room actually craft and design intelligently their own stories that they're going to use within their communications. And then the last thing we do is we teach people how to do experiential trainings. In other words, if you're going beyond just a keynote, if you lead a team and you need to actually train or you need someone to really absorb something at a deep level quickly, how do you take an idea and turn it into an experiential learning environment? So it's an awesome event. And the website is Speaker Trainer Experience, where someone could check it out. And I think they could find me through that site. Maybe not. Yeah, yeah. I googled before you said it, Speaker Trainer Experience. And the very first thing that pops up is actually your face. So they could find you very easily that way.

There's a video on there that's kind of fun to watch. It's run by you and John Vroman, correct? That's right. And when I had John Vroman on, I said that the two best public speakers that I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot, were you and him. Both Johns are two of the best public speakers I've ever seen. So anybody who is looking to get better at that and to improve at public speaking, I would definitely recommend going to that. But John, I appreciate you.

It was so much fun to catch up and get an hour of your time. And I hope that you have an amazing day. Brad, this was awesome, man. Good catching up, buddy. Take care. Thanks. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the

show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWF motivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWF motivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music