The Ryan Leak Podcast - Who Really Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Millionaire dreams require millionaire habits. Season 2 is us going through Ryan Leak's book Chasing Failure and giving insights on how followers can embrace risk-taking in their work environments. You can purchase Chasing Failure at ryanleak.com.

Welcome to followership was Ryan Leake, a podcast designed to equip followers with the tools they need to succeed in the workplace. I don't know what kind of leader you have, but I do know that the type of leader you have does not have to determine the type of team member or the type of follower you can become. I know there's a great deal of resources that are spent on leadership every single year. I decided I wanted to create a resource for followership and for followers and people that are following those leaders because I think each and every one of us has to own our stuff, own our presence in the workplace, and show up as best as we possibly can. And so this particular season of followership with Ryan Lee, a great team member of mine, Lacey has been interviewing me on every single chapter.

And so I want you to check out this conversation that we had around Chapter 5. Ryan, I love this concept of this chapter. Who wants to be a millionaire? I think the word million is like you so elegantly put it. It often is the target that we strive for. And I'm not even sure it's the right metric or at times it's the right number to be striving for. Talk to me about the concept of how you came up with who wants to be a millionaire. What did that metric mean to you, I guess, the first time you held it out as a

Yeah, you know, I, I, in my early 30s, was the first time I really started meeting actual millionaires. I started asking myself, okay, the idea of being a millionaire is talked about everywhere, but, you know, you really start, you really start to just like look at their life, look at how they talk, how they think, what they read, who they hang out with, what they spend their time. You start seeing them, and you start asking yourself, do I actually want that? And, you know, I had met this one millionaire who was,

they operated on like three or four hours of sleep. And I would just be like, whew, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I want to actually be a millionaire. I'm not sure, or is there another way to do it? And so he started to just see in the fabric of really everything we do, million sort of this gold standard for every industry. A million downloads, a million views, a million customers, a million sales, a million stocks.

Like it's, it was everywhere. And it's like everyone's striving for, but not many people are asking the questions about what it takes to actually be on that level. And so one of my mentors, he said, hey, you should be, you should be asking anybody that you admire,

what does it cost to be you? And let's say you don't know the person. You still should be. asking the question of, hey, what does it cost to be them, whether that's a Steph Curry or a Tony Robbins or a James Clear? And you just, you look at people who are incredible at what they do. You really should be asking, well, how did they become who they are? Because none of those people became who they are overnight. Yeah. Or I've heard you say it a different way, right? Nobody came, Nobody came into success just through glory.

There was always some amount of pain. Always. Always. And I've just been embracing that lately. Like, I've just, I, people think I failed like a long time ago. I'm like, I fail every week at something. Yeah. Like, I just blow it.

And I've just been telling people, hey, here are the, Here are the people that thought about having me speak this month and then decided to choose someone else. And that didn't feel good. It's like, man, you know, you're a successful speaker or a successful author. It's like, yeah, but in the process of all of that is a ton of rejection. So, you know, you really do have to have the mental toughness to move forward and continue. than you doing your thing. Yeah, and even, I mean, just thinking about how much you travel now compared to when you were first starting off.

I think, too, we often forget a lot of the pain has to come before the glory, right? We want the glory and then almost to delay the pain. But you, other professional athletes, like anybody that's been through it, those first couple years, they're the ones with the most sacrifice, right? That's when you saw your family the least. Yeah, absolutely. I mean and and through a pandemic, you know, we've been fortunate enough to be able to do some things virtually. But yeah, I mean, it's it's not easy being away from the family.

And even if you were to ask me, what does it cost to be me? You also would have to ask my wife and my kids. you know, what does it cost them for me to be me? And that's something I'm thinking about all the time. How much of your success, I guess, comes down to this recipe of how much time's required, how much disciplines required. You know, you've got a couple other levers that I love, financial investment, you know, what do you need to learn, what you need to know?

But as you think about time management discipline, can you talk a little bit about either as it relates to your life or other executives or leaders or athletes that you've seen, those two, I think, jump out at people the most. But talk to me a little bit about kind of the components of time and discipline and how you think about that regarding how to be a millionaire. Yeah. Well, I think when you look at people who have had a million type of success in any industry, they are extremely particular about their schedule.

there's not many idle hours in their day that aren't either planned or that they have not been very intentional about. There's just not much free time with people on that level. and so I think every person has to look at their calendar and as weird as this sounds, when someone shares their goals with me, when someone tells me what they want to pull off, typically even with my clients, my executive coaching clients,

we always have a calendar meeting in a calendar discussion because your calendar will set you up, for success or it will set you up for failure. What do you spend your time doing? And part of what I love doing and coming alongside executives is helping them be more efficient with their time. A lot of us live with the idea, well, if only I have more time.

No, if only we were better stewards of the time that, that we have. One of the time exercises that I love to just tell anyone to do is to understand the value of your time. And so let's take your salary or whatever you were able to bring in the year 2020 or at the end of 2021 and divide it by, you know, if it's, you know, let's say you work an average of, I don't know, 50 hours a week. You know, it's like what, 2,600 hours?

And then you just divide it. We know what an hour of your time is worth. Okay, so if you do, let's see, a million divided by the 2,600, an hour of their time is worth 384. $4. And let's say you watched a full season of the office, which is a great show, by the way. That person would have given the office, which is about 73 hours, that would have given them $27,692.30.

Is what you gave away. Yeah. To someone else. thing. To a thing. To a thing. To a thing. And again, I watch shows, but when I do, I realize the value.

The value of, like, I know what an hour of my time is worth. And so I think the thing that I would encourage anyone to do is to understand the value of their time. And this leads in everything when it comes to time management. It helps us be one more efficient with our time. It also helps us be more efficient with other people's time. This runs into how we operate in and run meetings. And in every single industry I have ever worked in or worked with,

from real estate to finance to manufacturing to the food industry or professional sports. Every single one of them, what they have in common is meetings that people feel don't add value to their job or life. Pointless meeting.

And so, and if you have, I can't tell you how many executive meetings I've been in, where the average income of the room is a quarter of a million dollars and above, okay,

a quarter of a million, and above. up. And it can be nine people in that room that will just waste five or six hours. And I'll just go, do you realize the problems you could have solved with 45 hours of your time combined, 45 hours? you have any leadership issues that exist in this organization that could be solved if nine of you went to your offices if we made it an exercise right if I said hey I want everyone to go away for an hour here's a problem I want you to go figure out how to

solve it and come back I guarantee you in in that in that one hour time again but I get a total of nine hours because of nine different people I think we solved that problem but for some reason we'd rather sit in a meeting and talk about God knows what and maybe it's ego but I am a massive proponent of people understanding the value of their own time

and also understanding the value of other people's time I think that's very important and so managing it treating it like it's your money. You budget it. And so, and I used to have these open-ended meetings. And people would say,

well, what time do you need to go? And I'm like, oh, I'm good for the rest of the day. And you know what they would do? They'd take the rest of the day. And you're like,

oh, I didn't think through that. Yeah. Yeah. So I started scheduling meetings after my meeting. So, hey, means of 10. Hey, do you have a hard stop at 11?

I do. That's correct. I have a hard stop at 11. I do. Now, the meeting's going great. I can push back my 11. But, yeah, in my 11 could be anything I wanted to be. But I am very, very particular with my time.

And I've noticed that people who are in the million and above level, they just don't, they just don't waste, they don't waste time. Some of them have minutes. Sometimes you're given three minutes with someone at that level, and you better make the best use because that's three minutes. Yeah. Because they just don't have time. Or I've seen people just almost mixed, mixed to camps,

relationship building with efficiency and work product, right? And you hoe and hum the first 20 minutes of a meeting doing what you feel and what you've been taught is relationship building, but it's actually just very quick small talk. What you do this weekend? Oh, how's your family? Right. And in the same vein of budgeting your time, I know you talk a lot about relationships, who to know and how to add value. And I think we're better off in that sense. I would much rather go and have an intentional be present lunch with a coworker and really get to know them and really talk about their family versus some of the pleasantries that go on that are just surface level to your point, which can distract, I think, from some of the productivity or just not create that cohesion and that collaboration,

which is why you're coming together anyway. It's like a facade of relationship. Totally. And I think we make time for the things we value the most. And I think for people that are listening to this podcast, that may not be all that in control. of their own schedule, especially if they have a boss and, you know, they don't really get to always control when the meeting is and the

agenda set for the meeting. But I think one of the things that actually, I want to say I heard you you talk about one time in terms of just meeting is really

setting some parameters around meeting and giving people an opportunity to, I think the name is, I think it's the chief candid officer of a meeting, which is that person's responsibility to keep everyone honest. Yeah. I love that idea. For a follower that may not have that much influence, I think there is a respectful way of asking questions

to keep the room on task. Yeah. And to avoid rabbit trails where we just talk about anything. The greatest meeting I've ever been in was at AT&T. I was getting ready to do an event for them and we had just like a pre-event meeting.

It's a regular, regular pre-event meeting. And it was 15 minutes left. long. It was 15 minutes long and it was incredible. I was blown away. It was they just had an agenda. There was so much clarity. Honestly, it happened so fast. I was like, I was like, did we even meet it? But there was no, I left with no questions. I left going, that was very, very, refreshing. I'm like, are all your meetings like this? But I think there was utmost clarity and there was, every person in the room felt the space to say, hey, hey, let's make sure we're staying on task. We're going to be mindful of everyone's time. And I just, I just thought it was excellent. So I think

there's a respectful way for followers to be able to just not feel like they're responsible to keep the room on task. But I think asking questions, that bring the group back to the design of the meeting, I think is important. And obviously, there's times for chit-chat and having fun and just building team chemistry. But how many people would describe their meetings as that? And on Zoom and teams in the society within now,

it's more difficult than ever before to do that. So I think it's important that people stay on past. Yeah, I think that's awesome. Everything that I've heard you talk about with meetings and even with your your clients, it's really about making sure we're meeting for impact versus busyness. And I think that it gets to the heart of really this chapter. It's like how are you driving and adding value meetings being one tool of those, making sure we have the right participants.

But let's talk about a couple of the others. One of my favorites is who do I need to know. I think you do this probably, I think you actually challenge people more than anyone I've met, but just being good to be good, right, to add value without some sort of alternative motive. But talk to me about where that principle came from and how you coach your clients today around who do I need to know. Yeah. Well, there's this, this is a, it's a really great question because there is a balance that I think we have in our American workforce and networking events of what's in it for me versus what's in it for you and the give and take nature

of relationships. I found that the best mantra to live by is to err on the side of giving more than you receive. Give more than you receive. And so I think it's important that you just, you try to add as much value to other people, not in a sense of, oh, one day I'm going to cash in these chips. That's right. You just, if you're in a room, you're invited to a room, you're invited to a meeting, invited to an event, you think, okay, how can I have value to this person?

And most of us make decisions about, who we want to work with, typically by the relationship that we have with them, how they made us feel. And we don't always choose the person who's best at the job. We'll typically choose the person that we're the most comfortable with. And so let's just say you're trying to choose between someone's going to install a pool at your house, okay?

Well, depending on that salesperson and how they treat you, how they talk to you, it's going to make you feel a certain kind of way. But no one's going, can you bring your concrete slab sample and we can just go back? It's like no one's doing that. And you think about that in a car industry. It's like, yeah, I really want this car, but sometimes the person's selling you the car, you're like, I don't know that I want this car. Right. The car didn't change.

The person changed. And so it's all, there's a park place. They have a bunch of dealerships in Texas. There's a guy there named Don. Don text me once a quarter. He wishes me a happy birthday every year, and he's always the first person. of the day. That's a wish me

happy birthday. I have not purchased a car from him in five years. In five years. That's crazy. But every and so I'm always like

someone's like, man, I need a car. I'm like, you can go see Don. Right. Right. Right. The integrity. Don is so, and when,

when Don told me a car, he was so honest he was so truthful he said hey here's a deal this is how much money I'll make on this on this deal and this is how much money

to do like hey I'm obviously here to make money and I obviously want to give you a deal so hey how can we meet in the middle and I'm like this is a guy I want to do business with full transparency turned his monitor around

and showed it to him. And you're just like, this is a guy that like, you, you just, you just trust, you just, I mean,

it's, it's, it's incredible. Yeah. Anytime I would take my car to get service, he'd just come over, make sure everything is, it's going around.

I mean, it was, it, it's, it wasn't the one and done. I got to say, okay, I'm moving on.

Like, you know, my book came out. Okay, my book came out. Hey, if it's not too much trouble, could you swing by and sign a couple for me? Oh, that's awesome. What?

Love Don. What is going on? We need Don on a podcast. Just a good human who adds value. We do. And again, it's a, it's, it's, now is, is Don doing that to cash in the chips later? Maybe. I just, it still doesn't change.

the fact of the stories that I'll tell about Don. Right. But think about what his actions actually fuel and build this relationship, right? It actually becomes more authentic with time because as you pump referrals his way and you see him care about the people that you care about, right? And those people come to you of just, Ryan, thanks for sending me in the right direction. You start to really build an authentic, like, relationship and respect for each other. So I hear you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's, I think it's important that you try to treat everyone like there's someone. We try to treat everybody like there's somebody. And you just try to add a value. You just try to add value to their life. there are famous people that would reach out to me for something and there are people who are strangers on Instagram that reach out to me. I have a community text

where I send out weekly encouragement to people via text. You can subscribe to that via Instagram. It's all my social stuff. You can find if you want to be encouraged every single week. And people will text me stuff, questions, and honestly, when I can, I'll respond.

Yeah, there's a couple times where I've called you, and I'm like, Brian, what are you doing? You're in pickup line with your kid, and you're just messaging people. And the things people disclose to you and the advice that you have for them, that community app, it is crazy. I was shocked.

I thought it was just something, you know, that you'd signed up for because you're so spontaneous. But, I mean, it really does connect you. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny. People would be like, hey, I know this is a robot, but I just want to say, and I was like, hey, Tony, what's up, man?

It's not a robot. It's actually my phone. You know, can you do my wedding? I'm like, I can't. But congratulations, send me photos, you know. So every person's different. But I think it's important that you're constantly thinking of what's in this for them. If you're that type of person, I just think things will go well for you in general.

That's what I believe. I totally believe if you're others focused type of person that says, hey, I'm looking for ways to add value to other people. doesn't matter what room I'm in. I could be in a room with people that can promote me or I could be in a room with someone that can do nothing for me. That's good. I'm going to try and try and have value people in one way or another.

So I think that that's important. When it comes to networking, I think, especially when you're living in a deficit, especially when you're needing a job or you're needing a promotion, it's so easy to focus on just you and what you need. But I think it's very important that you take your eyes off yourself for just a moment and just look for ways to add value to other people. And here's what I know.

The executives I work with are looking for leaders who act like that. That's right. They're looking to promote people who are adding value to everybody else. Yeah. And so making it about you actually isn't helping you. But making it about others is, in my estimation, the way to really get ahead is because you're adding value to other people. And I've learned that.

the people that add value to other people talk about those people in meetings. Yeah. So one of my clients, I was like, am I doing a good job? I can't read, like, do you still want me on retainer? What's how my measured executive coaching can be a little elusive? And it's like, what's the bottom line? And they just say, hey, every single one of our executives brings you up in a meeting. in some way, shape, or form.

So I don't know what you're saying in these meetings, exactly. But I just, I keep hearing about you in positive way. So I don't get why we would do anything else. I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm like, sure. Yeah. But so I think if you're, if you're just consistently adding value to people, whether it's a work relationship or a neighbor,

I think you just, you just continue to do it. continue to do the right thing for the right reason. And maybe those chips get cashed in and some sort of benefit for you down the road, but that's not why you do it. I think we should teach our kids. I think we should, you know, encourage one another to just continue to add value to other people.

Yeah. You're really almost talking about the difference between building a reputation versus like being known for one tactic. It's, you know, I'm sure we can come up with a thousand analogies, right? It's the difference of being known for one hit, being a one hit one-hounder, right, versus having the greatest classics under your name, right?

Or, you know, you follow us way more than I do. But I think that's what we're really talking about with followers, right? Is how can you consistently build a reputation versus turning in your homework and getting an A one time and then expecting a promotion from it? Wow. You know what, you know, like, moment for me

and what you just said is this idea of brand versus reputation because brand is so much about how am I presenting myself to you how do I make myself look

whereas reputation is the impact you've actually had on other people and I think we definitely definitely work in society right now that is very brand conscious. But I don't know how much people are really thinking about their own personal reputation

that you actually can do a lot about. And I think that that's very important for a follower to think through. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of followership with Ryan Leak. I wanted you to know that I got a new number just to connect with you. And this is a number that I use to be able to answer people's questions and I send out weekly encouragements. Every single week, I send some sort of thought, something that I've been chewing on that really can help someone get through their week. If you'd like to subscribe to that, you can text 469-809-1201. Again, that's 469-809-1201. You can text, hey, you could text subscribe,

you could text followership and you will get an automated message from the service. But trust me, it is coming to my phone. And if you ask me a question, I most likely will answer to prove to you that it is me and that it is coming to my cell phone. Now, if today's episode added value to your life, I would encourage you to rate it by stars as preferred. I would also encourage you to perhaps leave a. comment, I would also encourage you to buy chasing failure on Amazon or wherever you purchase books.

You can even get it on Audible. It's me reading the book. There's even some extra bonus material with Audible as well. And, of course, if this added value to your life, I would encourage you to share it with a friend. Until next time, we'll see you.