I got Brian Bogert here on the establishing your empire podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Very excited to have you on the podcast. Why don’t we just start off with give us a little bit background of who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so excited to be here. Thank you for having this platform to be able to put good in the world.

I, I love, I love starting with being able to acknowledge that it takes a lot of work, so that’s great. I want everybody who’s watching or listening right now. Just close your eyes for one second. I’ll tell you when to reopen them. I want you to imagine walking out of a store after a successful shopping trip, walking into your car, turning your head and seeing a truck barreling 40 miles an hour, right at you with no time to react.

You can open your eyes. Now that’s where this portion of my story begins. My mom, my brother, and I went to our local Walmart to get a one inch paint brush. And as we were heading to the car, I’ve always had an excitement vigor for life. It wasn’t a surprise. That was the first one of the car I got there and was waiting for my mom and brother to catch up, to unlock the doors you see, that was before we had key fobs.

We had to literally put a key in the door and unlock it, but I’m standing there. And as it was, as I was waiting, a truck pulls up in front of the store driver and middle passenger. Get out. And the passenger all the way to the right feels the truck moving backwards. So he did what any one of us would do.

And he moved over to put his foot on the brake, but he instead hit the gas combination of shock and force threw him up onto the steering wheel, up onto the dashboard. And before, you know, it, he’s kind of holding 40 miles an hour across the parking lot with no time for us to react, we were parked in an end spot.

So we went up and over the median and the end spot when I’m part of the tree hit our car and it yanked me to the ground. The truck continued to run over me, diagonally tear my spleen, leave a tire tracks, gone on my stomach and severed my left arm completely from my body. So there I am laying in the middle of the parking lot on 115 degree day in the middle of August and Phoenix.

My arm is 10 feet away. My mom and brother watched the entire thing. And so did my guardian angel is the nurse walked out of the store, right when this happened. And fortunately she saw the life and limb scenario that was in front of her. And she immediately went into action. She rushed over and put her hands on the wound to stop the bleeding and also instructed some innocent bystanders to run inside, grab a cooler, fill it with ice and get my arm on ice within minutes.

Had she not done one or both of those things? I either wouldn’t be here with you today or I’d be here today, but without a left arm. And so I’m going to expedite the rest of that, that portion of the story, because I’m sure that a lot of people are weren’t expecting it to go there today. Right. I have a very unique story, but what I’ve realized in all this time of doing this is that we all have unique stories and what’s important is that we pause and become aware of the lessons we can extract from those stories and then become intentional with how do we apply them in our lives.

So I’ll share with you before we jump in further two of those core lessons. The first is I learned not to get stuck by what had happened to me, but instead get moved by what I could do with it. And the second I didn’t realize until far later in life, because I spent so many of those post-accident years in a fog, right?

I was seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old. And although I was very aware of what was happening to me, I also was being led through the process. My parents, however, were not in a fog. They were intimately aware of everything that was happening. And the idea of seeing their son grow up without the use of his left arm was a source of great suffering for them.

And so they willed themselves day in and day out to do what was necessary, what was tough, what was uncomfortable. And they embrace the pain to ultimately heal and strengthen me. And so, although whether intentional or not, I don’t know, but they ingrained in me a philosophy and a way of living because they taught me to embrace pain, to avoid suffering.

And I believe when this is done, right, we also gained freedom. So this was the same concept that I used to not only overcome this unique injury, but how my business partners and I built our last business from a quarter million to 15 million in the span of a decade. And now I’ve flipped it on its head as a human behavior, coach performance coach and speaker, to help hundreds of individuals and organizations, just like you become more aware, more intentional and who they already are, their most authentic selves.

You see, when we do this, that’s when the door begins to crack to perspective, motivation, and direction. And that’s when magic starts to happen in our lives and joy, freedom and fulfillment start to come in mats at such an intense introduction. I love it. So you were like seven years old when this happened, something like that?

Yeah. So I had a major accident as well through well accident and hit a a cord and last and lacerated my liver, my spleen hospital for a long period of time, stuff like that. Nothing as drastic as yours. But, you know it’s, that’s like a life changing life altering thing at any age. So it’s you know, there’s so many places to go from there, but I guess the, the, I want to want you to go a little bit more deeper into the embracing pain to reduce suffering, because I think a lot of people would hear that and be like, okay, I’m not sure what that means, or they might not understand it.

So maybe give us a little bit more depth there. Yeah. So the, the world tells us right. To reduce eliminate or avoid pain. Right. And the reality of it is it’s like a natural evolutionary response to like, we just tried to avoid pain to keep ourselves safe for a lot of years. If we look at the definition of pain, I think that’s where it’s best to start.

Right? When, when we look at pain, it’s literally defined as short-term intermittent a direct cause of something and alleviates after that direct causes removed. Well, we tend to do as human beings as we always do. We tend to change definitions with clarifying words, right. Other adjectives. And so what do we often do?

We put acute pain and chronic pain out there? Well, what’s interesting about that is when we put chronic in front of the word pain, it materially changes the definition because it implies that it’s not short term, it’s not intermittent and it doesn’t alleviate after that direct causes removed. So instead, I want us to think about this differently instead of putting the word chronic pain in front of it, anything that is longer than short term intermittent and still persists isn’t pain at all, it’s suffering.

And we don’t want to admit that suffering exists in our lives, particularly when it’s a direct result of our choices. Right? So let’s look at this concept to understand just what am I, what do I mean when I say embrace pain to avoid suffering, I’m going to get four examples because these are ones we can relate to across the board.

We can embrace the pain. I’m hitting the gym for 30 minutes a day to avoid the suffering of aches and pains of a sedentary lifestyle. We can embrace the pain of the fit. Our kids are sure to throw by taking away their mobile devices at the dinner table to avoid the suffering of years of lost, meaningful connection and conversation that we’ll never get back.

We can embrace the pain of a difficult conversation with our spouse. To avoid the suffering of a Loveless marriage that might end up in divorce or ultimately being stuck in a marriage when divorce is really what we want. We can also, as business owners, fire our top salesperson, who’s the greatest top line contributor in our business to avoid the suffering of stagnant growth and losing all of our other top talent, because they’re the biggest cancer in our culture.

You see the reality of it is it’s like this applies to everything in our life, but we are so conditioned to avoid those moments of pain, to avoid those moments of discomfort. And I believe that we all must choose our pain or suffering will choose us. And so what I’m really encouraging us to do is and we’ve got three steps that we walk through on this.

We may get to it today. We may not depending on where the conversation goes, but the reality of it is, is this is one of the most crucial things towards building towards our pathway to success. And yeah. I mean, really my first question would be like, how, okay, that’s great. If we start first, understand that we need to start embracing the pain, but how do I actually get started?

Right. Is there like some kind of daily process I can do right. To work through that soon as I first realize, okay, I have this issue that I need to work through. How do I actually go about doing it on a regular basis? Right. Absolutely. So, you know, there’s obviously multiple different steps, but I’ll hit on the three that I think are most important.

You know, first we have to start by acknowledging the suffering that we wish to avoid. And sometimes that sounds a little backwards. So people are like, wait a minute. I have to define suffering in my future life. But what that really means is if we’re really clear on what’s important, if we’re really clear on who we are, we’re really clear on the things that we want to accomplish, then anything that’s opposite of that is suffering.

Right. So you and I might be sitting here today and, and say, Hey, I want to be able to play sports at a high level with my kids well into my sixties, so that I’m in a position to also play with my grandkids depending on ages and timing, whatever. Right. So if I don’t embrace the pain of keeping myself healthy, eating right, keeping movement into my life, making sure that I can maintain my overall health right then I will ultimately suffer because I won’t be able to fulfill that dream and promise.

If I want to build a business that generates opportunity for a hundred people, right? And I want to really be able to give people the autonomy and freedom to have those types of opportunities in their life. And I view myself as the ability to build that. I have the skillset, I have the things. If I don’t embrace the pain of all the things that are necessary to do that.

And I can’t ever build my business beyond the solo preneur or two to three of us, right. Not accomplishing that can be a source of great suffering. So I always say acknowledge the suffering that we wish to avoid. Because it is the counter to getting clear on who we are and what we want to accomplish in our lives.

The second step is to identify the pains that we tend to avoid and learn to embrace them. So I’m gonna give two examples on this. Cause again, these are things that a lot of us can relate to. I will tell you, I have an imbalance in my body. I literally have a curve in my spine because I don’t have a lat on the left side of my back.

I don’t have a tricep. And my bicep is my Chrysalis from my leg. I have immediate imbalance. Which didn’t affect me for a long time in my life, but 12 to 15 years ago, as I started getting older, I started having more pain and the pain started shifting into suffering. I mean, it was debilitating it more at points.

And so what did I do? I learned that if I stayed lean, if I ate the right food, if I keep my body active and I focus a lot on core strength in general, then the suffering is reduced. It might still be a pain that I deal with on a regular basis, but it wasn’t debilitating. It wasn’t suffering. It wasn’t ever persisting.

So I joined the gym, but it’s the most logical thing to do when, you know, you need to move out and stay in good health. Right. I started going to the gym and after about a month I stopped going and I had to ask myself the question. Was it, the pain of working out that I was avoiding or was it the anxiety of working out in a crowded gym?

And for me, it was very, very clear. It was the second one. Right. And so I had to embrace the pain of creating the space, time investment in my house to build out a home gym. So I could keep myself active to do those things. Anybody, who’s an entrepreneur, a business owner, a salesperson they’re going to understand and relate to this next one, right?

There’s there’s call hesitancy that sometimes come into place. We see that 500 pound telephone that’s right in front of us. And so many people are like hesitant to pick up the phone and generate those cold calls and build, build connections. Relationships opportunities was having a conversation with somebody over the last couple of weeks.

And this was one of the biggest hurdles. So we had to really dig deep and understand, is it literally the hesitation of picking up the phone and talking to new people, building relationships, potentially adding value in their life that you’re avoiding? No, it wasn’t. In her case, it was, she literally had a fear of what success would look like.

She was afraid of what it would look like if she was successful, because she’d failed in so many other areas in her life that there was an emotional block and a trigger. So we unpacked that. We worked through that. And guess what? She’s picking up the phone as if there’s no hesitation anymore. Both of those examples.

It’s just ironic that those are both emotional triggers and behavioral patterns. And a lot of the work that we find what keeps people in those self-defeating paths is not the actual tactics that they have to deploy on. It’s some block inside of who they are. That’s keeping them from deploying on those tactics.

We have to identify the pains. We tend to avoid and learn to embrace them. Cause I’m not encouraging us to put ourselves in unnecessary amounts of pain, just for the sake of pain, but we have to identify the ones that are crucial in our pathway to success. Right. Those two examples of highlight that. And then lastly, we have to establish as a habit in all areas of our life.

So when you talk about, is there a daily practice? If there’s something that I can do, the answer is yes. Right? If we start to view this as a philosophy, that’s going to drive us where we want to go. Right? We can start to realize that the pains we have to embrace become less painful. The more often we do it, experts in habit.

Formation will tell you right, that there is what they call an up-front energy tax with any new habit. And so we view it that way often, right? That’s why new year’s resolutions fail. That’s why, like, so many things happen as people come in and it’s immediately viewed as a tax, a cost and expense in their day, whether it be by time, money, or energy.

Right. But the reality of it is if we flip that on its head and we start to view these things as an investment in our future self, and we’re very, very clear on who we are, what we want to accomplish. We know the pains that we need to embrace along the way. Right. It becomes much easier because we start to recognize it as an, as an investment in our future self.

So the free apps typically help people get on this path. So let’s go back back a little bit to your first company. Right? So, so how did that come about? Like, how did you let’s even talk about how you even started and then go through that growth process? Right. So, so how did you start that first company?

It sounds like you had a couple of partners and all that. So go, go. We were blessed that there was a larger platform, but we ultimately were a series of LLCs. And so we were a startup, but we had a bigger platform, but that doesn’t mean or guarantee success. Right. We were an unknown entity in this market.

So we had a platform to build off of, but we didn’t have the people, the structure, the resources, we just had the platform. And so, you know, when I started there, there was two of us and a quarter million dollars revenue, the team of people that they brought in right before us that had really tried to build this over the course of two years.

Really didn’t. Right. And so we had to really look at what’s the value proposition. How do we deploy this into the marketplace and how do we continue to leverage and scale so that this really can be a profitable growing building business. And so when I started, right, this was one of those things where literally I knew.

That this was going to be something where if I needed to take out the trash, I was going to take out the trash. If I needed to pick up the phones, I was gonna pick up the phones. Right. I knew that this was a part of building something and I couldn’t operate like I did in the prior five years at a bigger entity where we had resources and people to jump in and do everything.

This was, Hey, entrepreneur mindset. We’re going to literally build this from the ground up. And so I was there for about a year. Maybe just less than that. When we brought in another partner who he and I went shoulder to shoulder for a number of years, and we were kind of the silent ninjas running around in Phoenix, taking down big deals because nobody saw us coming.

Right. And we just had to backfill a lot of the things that normally we would have support around and we had to lead with revenue so that we could then invest in the right people so that we could scale ourselves the hard part about scaling any business. Right. Is that when you look at it, we as business owners, entrepreneurs, the leaders of the companies often have this belief that we’re the guy or the gal.

Like we have this belief that we’re more important than we are. And so part of that is we’ve got to embrace the pain of recognizing that like, we are not good at everything that we do. And even if we’re the ones who generate the relationship are the ones that build the trust are the ones that come in and, and start building it from the ground up the faster we get those things off our plate.

The better, because then we can go do what we do best, which has opened up doors, build relationships, add value. And so there was multiple turning points over the course of the 10 years that we, we built this where we, as partners had to sit around the table and be like, dude, you’re micromanaging. These people get out of the way, right?

Hey, the only way we’re going to grow and scale is if you’re focused on the areas that we need to, which is growing our business and maintaining key relationships with our existing clients, get out of the weeds of right. When you bring on a new client, how do you transition. And so there was four partners, ultimately, over the course of the first few years that we ended up bringing in, it was the four of us that built this primarily with amazing teams that we were able to scale and scale and build over time.

I mean, I’m just going to own it. They, all of our teams were way smarter and way more capable than any. We were just the dumb ones that knew how to open up doors. Right. And so but those, there were, there were growing pains, right. There were times where we didn’t have the right resources on the, on the floor and we had to.

Backfill it, figure it out, do things differently. You know, and sometimes sell a belief based on faith that we weren’t sure we could deliver on, but we sure figured it out pretty quickly. Right. And if we did one deal in one industry, we were experts all of a sudden. So like the reality of it is it’s like there was a lot of growing pains over that period of time and a lot of conversations and we had to change and mold our behaviors as the leaders.

Multiple times to make sure that our teams trusted us, our teams would run through walls for us and that we could show up and do what we did best. Everything is going well. Right. How, how do you leave and start your own thing? Right. So I’m sure there’s a story there. So how has, how did that transition happened?

Yeah, so, you know, I started my coaching and speaking business about six years ago. You know, what, what got me into it frankly, is I hired my first coach about seven years ago. Woke up one day after having our son and six months went by like that. And I realized I didn’t adjust anything in my life. I was burning the candle at both ends.

I always wanted to provide everything for my family. And I, it was one of the first times in my life that I didn’t have the mentors or people in my life, nor did I feel like I add the skillset or smarts to figure it out myself. So I went out and interviewed a bunch of coaches and landed on one. And within a month of working with him, he goes over it.

You gotta be doing this. And I said, yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m paying you a lot of money. And I just tell me how great I am, but let me figure out these other things. I don’t need to add something else to my plate. And he goes, no, man, you’ve been on stage since you were aged out. And like you naturally coach and elevate people in businesses, like you’re a builder.

You find ways to connect dots and help people overcome. And I said, yeah, yeah, whatever. Right. I literally dismissed it. And he trickled it with me for about nine months. And that’s when I jumped in. I tell you that, because I think that’s important context to realize, right? I had this running side by side for about five years and I didn’t necessarily have visions or aspirations of going out and doing this full-time I figured if I could do both at a high level, I would.

And that’s kind of where it was. A lot of good came from that time and the focus and the more I coached people, the more I realized I wanted to be coaching people, the more I was on stage, the more I realized that I wanted it to be on stage. I had some other health stuff that took place, which I won’t go into detail on, but it rattled me a few years back.

It, it it, I had multiple doctors tell me I was perfectly healthy and I just knew I wasn’t fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, brain fog were there. And anybody who knows me for five minutes know that my energy and my intellect are two things that I identify deeply with as a part of my identity, my identity.

So we get through that. I’m doing well. And about last July, my wife and I went away. For a weekend physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, like we were in sync that weekend. It’s one of the best we’ve had in 14 years together. We’re driving back to pick up the kids and she looks over at me and says, how’d you feel if you didn’t have to have the office on Monday?

And you know, I get, I get goosebumps every time I tell the story. And I, I say that’s a pretty loaded question, dear. Like, why don’t you tell me more? And she said, well, I think you will, you allow this health stuff. And in this most recent period to allow fear to enter into your world in a way I’ve never seen it effect you.

And she said, I think that you’ve convinced yourself that we need the money, the financial security, the status, the prestige of having built this business. And she said, I’m here to tell you that we don’t. She said, I also think that every day you’re in insurance, you’re dying a little bit inside and you don’t see it.

So she said, I don’t care if we live in a cardboard box. What I care about most is that you are good, you are fulfilled and you’re doing the things that you want. And she said, I also don’t think you’re even scraping the surface of your potential nor do I think you’re having even close to the impact on the world that you want.

So she said, we took a big bet on you once and it paid off and she said, there’s not another person on this planet. I would rather bet on than you. So if you want to double down on that bet, say the word. I was flooded with fear and emotions and all of this stuff, and it’s not lost on me. The courage it took for my wife to tell me all of that.

And she threw a dart and hit the bullseye was way more clear in that moment than I was. And that began the process. So last September, I put the wheels in motion with our CEO, our COO, and all my business partners. And ultimately said, we’re gonna do a nine to 10 month transition because we were mid fiscal year.

And I had made a commitment to the company. I’d made a commitment to our associates. And if I decided to leave mid-year, that would impact a lot of people from a budgetary standpoint. And that’s not how I would choose to leave. And it was very clear to me that I wasn’t running away from anything. I mean, on the surface, honestly, during like I, everybody was like, Oh my God, like, you’ve got it great.

Like you’re living the American dream. You’re making all this money. You’re doing this. You’re impacting lives. You’re, you’ve grown a business. You, you know, you were a partner at a super young age and like it’s, it’s been a really cool, phenomenal path. And the reality of it is, is it’s like I had to ask myself through the lens of the regret minimization theory.

Right. When I’m 80 years old sitting on the beach with my wife, reflecting back on our life, what will I regret more hitting the easy button and staying where I was at, because it was a lot of money. And we had organic natural growth of double digits every year, or taking a chance to go really chase what I believe I’m put on this planet to do.

And, you know, I looked at that through that lens and that was an easy answer. And I never want my kids to witness me ever take the easy path that would go counter to my philosophy of embracing pain. Right. So I literally went through and I had a set of standards that I wanted to exit on. And I took a nine month window was working a hundred plus hours a week, which I don’t say that proudly.

It was a period of time that is not sustainable. I’m not one of those. That’s like the harder you work, like blah, blah, blah. Like there’s a, there’s a very healthy balance to rest and stress in life that we need to turn into. But in this case, I was like, this is a sprint because if I can set the foundation even greater for where I want to head and I can exit on the right terms.

Then I’m going to feel really good about the closing of this chapter. And that’s ultimately what happened. And so May 31st I executed the buy sell. It was my last day in insurance and I’ve been chasing this heart ever since it’s been a blessing. And I’m so happy, brother. Congrats. Yeah. On that. So your wife obviously gave you that push to go over the ledge.

Right? I get asked this a lot of how to start a company or how to leave the corporate job. I even had troubles with this, even though I’ve owned companies before having a corporate position took me way too long to leave. You know, and I you’ve already touched on, touched on a few ways to kind of position yourself to take that leap of faith, but can you, any more tips or tricks that you could talk about to, for somebody who wants to start their own company or do their own thing, or even just leave their job for another one, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, I’m like I’m, although I’m very instinctual in a lot of things to the point where like often I’ll make a decision and just put it into action. This is a major move. For anybody, right. To walk away from the security of either a business that’s built or a salary that you’re getting from another company.

Like it’s a, it’s not a small thing to consider. I put in the work. And when my wife told me this in July, and I told you, I didn’t notify him until September, October it’s because in that period of time, I literally took myself on an intrinsic journey. And I also did external analysis on factors that I may or may not have control over.

So what I mean by that is I had to really go deep and ask myself the questions on, you know, who, who am I? Right. I already felt like I knew the answer to that, but I needed to get even further clarity because if I’m going to have to change even roles in this world, like. How will that look? What will that look like?

What do I really want to do from an impact standpoint and started to create really a vision for where I wanted to take this thing? I also started really significantly investing in what, what was really just an organic, great side business. That stuff came to me. I’d never turned to the growth switch on right stuff.

Had come to me through my network, through relationships that I had built. And so I had to start really looking at okay, where and how do I build in scale in this type of a business? I think relationships value and impact, which are three things that I’ve always focused on or sole focuses for me right now translate into this world as well.

And so when I had to figure out how do I actually build the platform? What are the different product offerings that I have right outside of just one-to-one coaching or speaking? How do we scale this? Because what I was already running into is on my side, right? Not everybody could afford me one to one, but they wanted to tap into the philosophy.

So how do we scale this with other coaches, other thought leaders, other content, so that we can really kind of get out there. And then I also had to answer a few questions around. You know, I’ve always had a very big philanthropic and altruistic side to me. I had to answer that question. I’m in a position where I’ve got monetary goals on things that I want to donate into the community that meant taking a step back from some of the stuff that I wanted to, to really look at how do I scale and grow this business.

So it can maintain that philanthropic altruistic nature of giving. When I tell you, I want to impact a billion people in the next 25 years, I know that 99.99999 of those will never pay me a dollar. So how do I create impact and add value into the world and just know and trust that when I do that, right, my paying clients will more than subsidize the 99.9999999 lives that I’m going to impact and never touch.

The last thing is, is be intentional, right? I did a seven year cashflow analysis with extreme bookend comparatives to really know, Hey, based on our savings, based on the money that we’d been able to stock away based on my buy, sell based on all these things, like what is my runway? No, what that looks like, like don’t be, don’t just like throw a ball up in the air and be like, Oh, I’m just going to hit it.

Right. I mean, yes, that can work in some cases, but standing a business up is way more work, way more difficult than I think most people realize and understand too, that I’ve never been a believer in work-life balance. I’m a believer in work-life integration, but as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, it’s even more so where it’s constantly on your mind, like there is sometimes no ability to shut it off.

And so you have to really make sure that if you’re married, right, you’ve got a spouse, a partner in life, whatever that looks like for each individual, that you both are understanding, what are the sacrifices we’re going to make on this path? Are we both in this together? What communication is necessary?

Because I’m here to tell you it’s not lost on me. The push my wife gave me what if, what I was about to do was going to sacrifice what my wife and I have, what I have with my kids. None of that would be worth it. Right. And so you just get clarity on all these things. I think those would be the tips I’d leave people with is, you know, sometimes we can act based on instinct and just like make an aggressive move.

I don’t know that this is the place to do that. Although others have and had been very successful. I think that’s why so many businesses fail is they don’t put in the work to lay the foundation to build off of. Yeah. I mean, you, you get, if you’re, if you can’t build that foundation, then you’re going to have a tough time running a business as well.

So go, and a lot of times what I’ll say is actually just start going through those. Steps that you said, because those require, you know, almost no money action, right? You’re you’re just, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re modeling, you’re doing stuff in your head to kind of figure out what you will you’ll have your visionary, you put together a vision.

Let’s also talk about, you know, you do a lot of keynote speeches, a bunch of stuff like that. A lot of people would have fear of speaking or getting in front, even just getting on this podcast. Yeah. Any thoughts there of how somebody could get over some of those hurdles? Yeah. So, you know, I think there’s like really, really deep rooted fear sometimes will literally keep people stuck.

And I’m not going to touch on that because that typically requires a lot more intervention. But I think that for most people, right, there is a, there’s a fear of being exposed, being vulnerable, saying something wrong, tripping over your words and like anything in life, like the more reps you get, the more natural it becomes.

And so, you know, when, when I look at those moments of discomfort, those moments of pain, right? We talk about embracing pain to avoid suffering. Bernay Brown and dare to lead actually outlined that she did this analysis for herself and those moments of discomfort, right. With a difficult conversation, a tough decision, a new business venture, like something that just, she had fear of was feeling stock.

Maybe her shame was in the way, right. And I’ve done the same type of thing with very similar results. So I referenced Bernay Brown because it’s a credible source. It’s booked in a book and all these things. But what she noticed is that those moments of discomfort typically last about eight seconds. I noticed it’s typically in that eight to ten second range.

And so if you have a hesitancy to get on stage, like yes, do some prep. Yes. Do some practice. Like don’t go wing it if it’s your first time. But the reality of it is, is like, I, you know, I have a client I’m going to use this example because it’s going to answer this question. She’s like a perfectionist. And she, it was a shame-based perfectionism and she was always in this lens of like, she never wrote a first draft.

And what that means is that she wouldn’t do something unless she knew she would be successful unless she knew she would crush it. And so she literally only started projects that she knew she could do a final draft. So, whether that’s a video, a podcast, a writing material, something in business, and, and once you started to realize, like you actually refine and your outcome becomes greater when you actually have multiple reps, when you have multiple failures, when you have perspective.

And so with her, the key key point coin that we came up with, and it’s the same thing for people who want to speak for her, it was just turn the camera on and start talking, right? If you want to have an opportunity and you think you’ve got a valuable lesson that people can benefit from. Get on a stage and start talking, get on a podcast and start talking, right.

Practice it if you need to, in some dry runs, if you want to, but like just start talking, I will tell you every time I get on stage, it’s not so much the case on podcasts, but sometimes, but every time I get on stage in front of a live audience, every time my nerves hit me every time and I’ve done it countless times, right?

Every time I feel that and I get up. And as soon as I get through my first or second sentence, I settle in and the nerves just go away. No, that might not be the case for every single person, but those eight to 10 seconds is what I’m telling you. Just embrace the pain, turn the camera on and start talking, get on stage and start talking.

So, so let’s talk about my podcast experience. Being a host here. I, I am not the personality to be really good at this. A lot of people would say. Would disagree with that because they only see their external. Right. And there’s a reason why my first question is like the easiest question ever. It’s just to get it started and back up because, you know, and then now we’re in it.

Right. So, and then that goes away and then it’s, you know, you’re not as nervous then, but I always, I still get nervous, but I pushed myself through it. I also go through the motions of like let’s book CLA you know, get more people book, try to get a bigger and bigger people to be guests on those show.

Cause if you go through those, those motions, you end up getting them. So you have to go, you have to show up. Exactly. And there’s been times where like, even wish that people would cancel, but then they don’t. And then there you go. You got to, now we’re here, right? You’re not going to. Undo it. I kind of lost my train of thought with that, but let’s, let’s, let’s go into your corporate trainings and stuff like that.

So like what what’s it even look like? So when we talk about, you know coaches, it goes such a big range. So where is kind of your sweet spot when you’re talking about actual, like people who have day jobs, right? Like they’re, they they’re in the middle in the company or either even higher up in a company where do you help?

People who work for somebody else. Yeah. So in my one-to-one work, I typically am working with that C-suite or high level executive high performing salespeople. And then I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, right. Cause it’s, it’s just both schools of thought exists. There are situations where, you know, in my one-to-one work there’s individuals that are just a growth minded.

So although I say that’s generally the case, there are other people who just view it as an investment and they they’re in their growth minded. They want to put in the work. Put that aside for a second though, because I think what, you know, the one-to-one work, there’s a limited number of spaces, the corporate trainings, the group coaching platforms, those are really scalable and that’s where we can kind of come into play.

So I’ll do things from literally leadership development, strategy type retreats. To help people and organizations really nailed down who they are as a company where they want to head. But then we also do this on a individual level where we’re working with groups of people at different leadership levels or sales levels within an organization.

I’m a big believer that everything in life begins with the who. And the, what is a manifestation of the who? I don’t care if you’re working in a, in a large organization, corporate culture or whatever. Typically, even though they’re going to have some culture and theme that they want you to become a part of, they’re also hiring you for you.

And so the more we get to that true autonomous core, radical, authentic self in a place that we can allow who you are to shine the better and what we do as well as also build it in from a cultural perspective, because we always start with kind of purpose legacy. Who am I today? Who do I need to become?

We look at a three to five-year vision. And what is that vision for that period of time? What are the strategic objectives? What’s imperative, right. So it’s imperative for me to be. For me, one of those is it’s imperative for me to have leverage in my life. So I always ask myself three questions. Is this something that only I can do?

Is this something that someone else can do? Is it something that even needs to be done? And I run everything I do through that triage because I find 90% of it fits in, in the latter two, which means sometimes as a business owner, I’m going to have to do it anyway. But at least if I go into it, that intent, I know this is either something only I can do or not.

And then we break it down into an annual theme. And one of the priorities that need to situate with a bunch of trigger questions to help understand how do we measure success, where are we going? What does this tie to? How does it connect to the work that we just put above it and down to quarterly emphasis in both personal professional and in community service to others, so that we really understand that we’re building a plan for this person in their life to create alignment, but also when they do that, they are better able to perform in their business.

And this happens across the board. We see it frequently all the way down to daily disciplines, which we talked about earlier, when we then can identify, right, what are the two or three things I can do in each category in my life that will really move me success, where I want to personally, professionally, financially in service to others, right?

Mentally, spiritually, physically like you name it. When we take that holistic aligned approach, that’s when people started to become free and they can live with no limits. It also means it a self-regulating process. Cause you know what fits and what doesn’t. So when we lead teams and organizations through this, it changes the philosophy from right.

We are this entity to, yes, we are this entity and we have this common vision and goal. But as each individual contributor, we get clarity on what’s important, who we are, what do I need to do to be successful? And we know what else is noise, so we can collaborate effectively together. Oh, we talked about some rituals before.

What? What’s an average day in the life of your life. Right? What kind of rituals do you have daily? It’s a great question. And this has evolved over time, but I’ll tell you where it stands today. So I get up every morning between four and four 30, I say between four and four 30, because I give myself the window if I need a little bit of extra sleep.

But the reality of it is, is I, I believe that mornings are the only time of day that I have a hundred percent control of my time, right before clients are reaching out to me before my wife and kids need me before. Right. I’m out there doing whatever I’m doing. And so that two and a half hours, the first two to two and a half hours of my day is a hundred percent focused on the things I need to do for me.

And so some people are like, Oh, wait, that’s selfish. Well, it’s the least selfish thing I can do because it puts me in the best position to be set up for success, to carry the burdens and help alleviate pain and suffering for other people. So the very first 30 minutes, literally I roll out of bed and I immediately come into my office, Jim casita, I sit down in my meditation spot and I meditate for 30 minutes a day.

Right. Sometimes there’s a focus on concentration. Sometimes it’s actual meditation, sometimes it’s visualization, but it’s sitting there with myself to just be in my body and be quiet and allow that to take place. My doing self has always superseded my being self. And so over the last few years, I’ve really found like the integration and necessity of both.

I immediately then move into bodywork. And I do typically 30 minutes of stretching and percussion therapy with my thera gun because with my body and my structure, if I don’t do that regularly and consistently, I literally get rigid as a board and that pain becomes suffering. I also follow that then by my physical activity.

Right. So working out, whether that’s weightlifting, some cardio, riding my road, bike, running, swimming, whatever the case may be, it immediately follows there. And then I also bring in journaling planning for my day, getting myself prepped. So I spend two and a half hours every day. And I hit on all four categories that I care about mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional.

Right. When I hit all four of those, I move things into conscious level of awareness. It allows me to be intentional in every moment of my day. No, no, sorry. Sorry to interrupt. But a lot of people say I don’t, I don’t have two and half hours. Right. W, you know, like for their day. And, you know, I think one way to look at that is, and I’m guessing your rest of your day is going to be extremely packed and busy as well is yeah.

Look, maybe you just have to get up earlier or go to bed later, you know? So here’s the thing when I say two and a half hours now that’s after six, seven years of refining this process, it started with 30 minutes. Right. Let’s do the math on this. Like I guarantee you, everybody can find 30 minutes in their day.

I guarantee you there’s 30 minutes of waste. Okay. I have very little waste in my day. Right. There are moments that are very intentional rest periods. And so it’s not about not sitting or not being, cause I have that built in, but I have very little like just downtime, right? But it started with 30 minutes.

Let’s do the math, right? Like, think about the compound effectiveness. Like how many people are like, Oh, I want more vacation. I want more time with my friends. I want more time to focus on my side hustle. I want more time to focus on my health. Right. And everyone’s always like, I don’t have time. 30 minutes a day.

Let’s just Monday through Friday. It’s five days a week. That’s 30 minutes a day, two and a half hours a week, 10 hours a month, 120 hours a year. Right, depending on how often you work, whether it’s a 40 or 60 hour workweek, that’s four to six weeks. Sorry. I did the math wrong on that. That’s two to three weeks that you’ve given yourself back in your day or in your year.

So it’s not so much about like times the only thing we can’t create Maura, but we can cheat the system. And, and again, when I did this and I did it regularly and consistently, I found that the more I spent time focusing in those four buckets, setting myself up for success. The faster, I was able to move with less effort in the rest of my day, so I can compress more volume into the same period of my working hours that I define.

If I set myself up properly, again, it’s about laying the foundation. If I lay my foundation every single day, I can build on top of it. If I don’t set that foundation, the day starts to crumble. And so I found that to be very effective for me, but I guarantee you, everybody can find 30 minutes a day and yeah, it might be getting up earlier, but I’m not also a sleep shamer right.

Like, I’m one of those that literally is going to say, you need to honor how much your body needs sleep. So if it’s not on the sleep side that you cut out, which is the case for so many, where are you wasting? 30 minutes. Right? That’s not adding. Or contributing or serving where you want to head in your life?

Yeah. I think a lot of people that are you know, streaming Netflix all night that, you know, you could replace that. I also think even in this is the 30 minute thought processes, even if you just are intentional with your day, I like to have. You know, at least one to three kind of, Hey, if I accomplish these things and I do this in the morning, I’ll be happy.

I’ll be happy that those things can be pretty easy stuff. But I also want to know that, like, I want to end the day being. Feeling fulfilled for that day. Right. I want to be happy that I did what I wanted to do, as opposed to just getting bogged down by emails. Right. The daily disciplines are about right.

So those are the personal things. One of the other things in my personal bucket is what I call Ashley’s big five. She’s my wife. Right. And so that’s like holding her hand, touching her hair, sending your intentional daily text messages, checking in on different things. Like I, you know, I hit those parts. So you talked about my day typically then my day right.

Starts between eight and nine, depending on the day. And it’s jam packed, right? Typically for like 10 hours, sometimes 12. It depends on the day, but I have dinner with my kids five to six nights a week without fail, because that is something that is absolutely very important to me. So I shut off typically by five or five 30 every night, I go inside swallowing hour and a half to two hours is exclusively focused on my kids and my wife.

We have dinner together. I help, I, I do bedtime all those same nights as well with my kids. I’ve got a five and a six year old. Like to me, those are routines and rituals that I’m not willing to sacrifice. Sometimes they happen. Right. Sometimes I’m traveling. Sometimes I’m going to dinner. Like it happens.

But if I do it more often than I don’t, it’s really important because those are memories. Again, I’m going to have with my kids forever and with my wife. Typically then after bedtime, my wife and I will separate for somewhere between 30 to 45 minutes. All typically do like my day in triage. Right. Like get to the stuff.

That’s absolutely urgent. The stuff that I need to, but I’m typically shut off. Like non-responsive. For almost everything, text, email, or phone calls after about 8:00 PM because that’s where my wife and I spend the next period of time together. Sometimes just talking. Sometimes we will watch a show together and wind down, and I’m typically in bed between nine and nine 30.

So I can get my full seven to seven and a half hours of rest tonight. I used to be the guy that got four, right. And burn the candle on both ends. And I, you know, my, my equation used to be stress equals growth. The more I pushed myself, the greater my capacity was the more I could grow. At burned me hard.

And now my, now my equation is stress plus rest equals growth. And you know, it’s not, it’s not about how much we sleep or how little we sleep. It’s what do we do with the time that we’re awake? So what was your approach to, you know, your marketing or business development? Right. So how do you get clients?

How do you get new clients, right? Yup. You know, traditionally it was all organic and referral-based and through my network, which was, which was great. And I told you I hadn’t turned the growth switch on. So I had a steady flow of speaking opportunities and coaching for five years. But I only had so much capacity while running this other business.

When this switched, right. I went back into the offense, which is building relationships, value and impact. Like literally that’s all I’m focused on. So I’m collaborating with new people a big funnel that I honestly completely to my own. Just credit devalued podcasts and some of the virtual stuff. And so, you know, when I, when we went live, everybody pandemic COVID came.

Everybody’s like, Oh, are you going to change your decision? Are you going to delay your timeline? You’re going to, I said, no, I’m clear and convicted of where I head. The business model might look different. The business plan might look different. The growth might look different, but I know where I’m headed.

And I also know what my runway is. So I, I had that buffer. But I shifted hard. Right? I had only maybe done a handful of podcasts. I’d never done a virtual summit. Nobody knew what a virtual seminar, a virtual keynote was. Right. They were all in person, but I did. And you and I were jamming on this before we jumped onto record, I looked at how am I going to show up in this scenario?

Right. I want to make sure because first impressions matter, right? Typically beyond a couple of minutes, like you can overcome first impressions, but I said, okay, if I’m going to differentiate in this space, I can differentiate in a technological world with technology. So I invested in building out a true virtual studio.

I’ve got a five-point lights set up with where this is my background, which is now on version probably six or seven, right. Where I’ve like refined to figure out what do I actually want behind me? What do I want on those shelves? What I, you know, that’s where that is. It’s six or seven feet behind me.

You’re six or seven feet in front of me. And so you’re on a DSLR camera obviously, but you’re also on a 50 inch screen. The reason I did that is so much of what I do in human behavior and performance coaching is reading people, leveraging my emotional intelligence to see the micro expressions, little things that pick up on the face and body language and connotation of voices where it’s like, I needed to see the other people clearly, but because my image was set up, people can consume me as clearly as possible.

Right. And I’ve actually won a virtual keynote where I was down to the finalists. I think all things else were equal and the company said, look, our people are going to see you better, hear you better and consume you better because of the quality of the technology. I also think it gives me for me, it gives me confidence too, that I have a set up that I’m proud of.

Right. Yeah. You know, and I think, I think spending a little time on that is important. Cause you, you know, you’re going to be in front of a lot of different people, you know, but let’s try it. Doesn’t have to be as high quality as what you and I would have at least a little bit of your personality comes out right.

With, with your backdrop and how and how you do it. Right. A hundred percent and you know, it has been a differentiator and you know, the number of times somebody I get onto a podcast and they’re like, Oh my gosh, like, what are you doing with your setup? I mean, I’ve shared the literal full, detailed setup with literal, like YouTube videos on like things I had to learn.

Cause I knew nothing about photography. Right. And I couldn’t bring a contractor in to set it up for me. So I literally had to invest the time to learn it so that I could set up a strong structure. But I’ve literally, I’ve shared the email now with tons of people. But where I was going with the podcast piece is, you know, I was like, you know, I’m going to dabble in this a little bit, not really understanding where I was going to head with it and chased, you know, 10 to 12 podcasts landed most of them, which was cool.

And it just took off from there. I mean, each one of those translated into five to six new opportunities in the last four months. I’ve now done over 90 podcasts and I’ve got another 15 already booked in the next two weeks. And I don’t say that to impress Darren. I say it to impress upon the point, like. I completely discredit it discounted podcasts, but I said, you know, what, where and how can I differentiate here?

And it’s blown my mind as it relates to reach, I’ve had more conversations with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met on the planet. I’ve been on podcasts based in the UK, Australia, India, right. And followers from around the globe are now starting to connect with me from places that I would have never thought right.

In my traditional stage route in the Southwest of the United States. Right. The reach has gotten far greater and I’m collaborating on business opportunities now as a result of it and things that are based in coaching and non coaching. And so, you know, I think the more we can put ourselves out there, and again, I’m focusing on relationships, value and impact.

I’ve said that a few times, but every time I show up to a podcast, right, I want to understand who is their ideal audience, who do I know in my network that can add value to their show and their audience, and like just making. Self self lists. Introductions has catapulted this to like another level and it’s generating opportunities that are now feeding the business.

In ways that I didn’t anticipate before. And so you know, I’m doing that. I’m leveraging some different things around social media strategies, content. Obviously I put a ton of content out cause I just really want to help people. And whether or not they consume me or my content or ever pay me, I know it’ll have an impact.

And I believe that to my core. So the hesitation is gone. It’s full on action towards. Focusing on impact. I’ve got 25 years to impact a billion lives. That’s taking all of my energy focus, intellect to really dial that in and refine my processes so that I can have a solid sales system so that I can serve the people that really want that deep work.

And I can impact the lives of people who can’t ever afford to invest in it. What about people that want to get in the world of coaching and there’s so many different areas of coaching, so it doesn’t really matter what of some ways, cause you just kind of now have gone all in on this. Right. What are some thoughts on the, how they could, you know, maybe some stuff that, that worked for you or some stuff that, that didn’t work, you know, anywhere you want to take it.

Yeah. So I’m going to start by saying, you know, there’s like a gazillion coaches out there and there’s a bunch of like fate gurus and there’s a bunch of slime balls that are selling like. Horrible courses and things that really they’re just focused on revenue generation, not transformation for people rip it in every industry though.

Like the industry, I think it’s just, yeah. Highlighted like how much it exists here. You know, over the last couple of years, it’s, it’s really strong. So I think the first thing for people who want to get in coaching, I really want you to look at it through why are you doing it? That’s the first question I would ask, because if it’s just to make money, I don’t think that’s a compelling enough reason to really drive you to.

To embrace the pain that’s necessary to really go after what it is. And this isn’t like, you know, you can have some quick wins for sure, but it’s really hard as a solo preneur in the very beginning, it’s really hard, like to recognize that you’re also trading time for money and a lot of different things.

So you’ve got to be very thoughtful about why, so that you can overcome the discomfort of all of those moments of growth and scaling. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is understand, like where do you have expertise and relevance based on your story. Right. And I think that that’s really important, whether it’s professional background, personal story, emotional intelligence, right?

Really understanding human connection, understanding human emotions, human behavior, like whatever the case may be. Or are you a fitness coach? Are you a nutrition coach? Are you a very specific podcasting coach? Like. Understand, like where do you have relevance and credibility, where you can tell your story in a way that’s effective to really be able to impact whoever’s in your space?

The other thing I would say is there are some people who need a toolkit, right? They need a toolkit to build off of, and there’s lots of coaching, certifications and ways to go get that toolkit. I always want you to understand your why. I always want you to understand what you want your, your relate-ability and credibility.

Your relevance is before you go down that path, because if you just jump in and go get your toolkit, but you don’t have those first two questions answered, then you’re an inch deep and a mile wide. And you really aren’t going to know where to go or how to do it. So I say that with no discredit, I think there’s a ton of people who have hung their hats as coaches who’ve gone and got certifications.

But they really don’t have relevant relevance and credibility in anything. Right. Or there’s a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds who are like, I’m going to go be a life coach. What does that mean? Like, and by the way, yeah, that’s not to say that at 19 or 20, you can’t do that, but have you answered the, why have you answered the relevance and credibility, then you get the toolkit and then I would just say it’s like anything, right.

You can jump in with both feet. Certainly. Can you rip off the bandaid and just say, I’m going to jump full force into this. Yes. But I also think that like, you should give yourself a little bit of a runway to test it, evaluate it, see if this lifestyle is what’s best for you. See if being a coach and carrying the burden of so many other people is something that you’ve got the emotional maturity and resilience to handle seeing if you can actually do these things.

So. I, I know I gave a longer answer there probably than you were expecting, but I think it’s really important that you begin with the why understand relevance and credibility, figure out what tools you either need to tap into or build, and then figure out like, is this really the path and the lifestyle that I want?

I think if you go through that four questions, You’ll be on the right path to decide like, yeah, this is me or not. And you’ll know the right time to jump in. If it is, I think you could take what you just said there and attribute that to starting a company, starting, you know, starting a business, doing a small business.

I think it’s the same thing. Right? Because a lot of people just want to say there are, they own a company or whatever, but they didn’t go through those, those, those processes. What about like glorious, right? It is not all glorious. I mean there is there, there, and especially in the beginning until you get teams around you, it can be lonely.

It can be isolating. It’s, it’s really difficult. And that’s why so many businesses fail. But I think if you do the work up front, you’ve got a greater likelihood to succeed and that’s all I’m encouraging people to do. We can’t guarantee success, but yeah, it’s not, it’s not all glamorous, but Instagram has made entrepreneurship.

Sure. Look glamorous. Right. It’s very true. I actually. I’ve I’ve owned companies with co-founders and right now I’m just on my own. And I don’t, I don’t, I think I’ll always do a co-founder again, because I’ve just have somebody else on the Island with you. Right. Just as have just have some company every once in a while, you know, it would be nice.

What about, so, you know, growing up, obviously with your injury, what’s some advice you’d give your 16 year old self, right? What would you say to him? So the period of life right after my accident was interesting. And so I’m, I’m going to give a little context and then, and then answer that question, you know, as I’m seven years old, I remember sitting there and feeling sorry for myself in the bed when I was there in the ICU.

And I remember feeling like why me? Right. And, and it’s really easy. I think when trauma or crazy things happen for people to get stuck. And, and I, I was on a fine line where I almost got stuck. But then we had so many families coming up to us saying, we’re so sorry for what happened to you, what can we do to help?

And then we come to learn that their kid in the ICU bed next to me, has a terminal illness. And doesn’t know if they’re going to live another month perspective points. Isn’t what’s important. And so that knocked me out of that piece. But what also started to happen is I became the center of attention and a lot of ways, and I didn’t want to be the center of attention.

And I also started to become very intimately aware of the limits and boundaries. Other people were placing on me based on their own lens that they were viewing the world. And I refuse to be defined by those limits and boundaries. And so at 16, I was well into the path of creating an external narrative, right.

That I’m good. I’m tough. I can do anything and I don’t need anybody’s help. And I proved that through a whole lot of things in my life with intellect and mental toughness alone. What I would tell myself at 16 would be you need human connection. You need other people in your life. We all need help. And though the perspective point me in the right direction, I ended up learning that lesson the hard way at age 20.

’cause I rebroke my arm in a snowboarding accident. Again, living my life to what I thought was no limits. Probably wasn’t a smart move given my prior injury, but I wasn’t gonna allow that to define me. Compound fracture went 10 months with it hanging by my side. And I learned that the world had bought into my narrative.

Nobody was there. I was, it was one of the most vulnerable periods of my life, but they just believed Brian was good. He was strong. He was capable. He didn’t need any of our help. And I didn’t have the courage to ask for it. And so that would be what I would tell my 16 year old self is you know, when I shut off physical pain, I shut off emotional pain.

I also shut off the ability to like really focus on human connection because the external narrative I created was I didn’t need it. And so I would have encouraged myself to really start the process of building my own emotional resilience, maturity, and really focusing on human connection earlier than I did.

You know, I’m a big believer that we can’t necessarily change the path and everything happens for a reason, but had I been able to do that four years earlier, who knows what the trajectory would have looked like? You know, and the emotional piece didn’t come in until way later. So that would have been more than a decade of difference in that capacity.

And so that’s it, right? Human connection and emotions are important and human connection without emotion. Isn’t really human connection. That’s what I would have told myself. Any, any mentors or books that’s helped you along the way with that path of, of being able to you know, enhance your connections with people or even just with yourself?

Yes, a lot. I, I read a lot. I probably consume a book a week and and I do that because I, I heard a quote seven years ago that the only difference between who you are today and who you’ll be five years from now, isn’t the people that you meet and the books that you read. Right. So it’s, what have you learned from other people and their collective wisdom and what can you learn early?

The book part is what knowledge you putting through your brain, right? And so I started really reading voraciously. I did have a very strong mentor early in my career who was very deeply involved in a lot of philanthropic causes. I mean, she was involved in almost everything major that happened in Phoenix over the last 40 to 50 years.

She’s just unbelievable. She’s a powerhouse. She’s totally unassuming. And she connected me with a lot of amazing people. And one of them set a comment to me pretty early on. He said, there’s no limit to what one can accomplish. As long as they, you care about who gets the credit. I mean, that’s what that’s all about, right?

It’s about human connection. It’s about collaboration. It’s about vulnerability. It’s about not needing the credit. It’s not, it’s not about the image and the ego. It’s about the impact. And so those started to happen. One of the most transformational books though, because I want to answer that question too.

I referenced it earlier. Bernay, Brown’s dare to lead was very powerful for me. You know, one of the things that I didn’t realize was holding me back for a long time was shame. And that book really helped me unpack shame. And she outlines in that book very clearly. And the reason I couldn’t identify it as shame in my own life is because most people think of shame as I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough.

And that’s like the dominating narrative for shame. In most cases. But the other narrative to shame is when you shut that down, you show up in the arena and you’re ready to go to battle. It’s. Who do you think you are? Everything major I ever did. I felt the need to apologize for. I felt like I shouldn’t live big.

I shouldn’t live beyond boundaries. I shouldn’t do major impactful things because I didn’t want other people to feel badly. Right. That I was doing it and they weren’t, or that I had the attention and they weren’t. And it wasn’t ever about. Me being better than somebody else. I just literally ratcheted myself back and it, it changed the ultimate Wolf in sheep’s clothing, because it literally boxes you in on both sides.

I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough. Who do you think you are? And you only have this much wiggle room. And so that was one of the most profound things and really helping me bring our ability and authenticity and understanding of shame, shame, resilience into my life because it was holding me back. Right.

I’ve done some majorly cool things in my, in my life that nobody knows about. And they probably won’t ever know because I’m still not going to bring it up like 10 years later or five years. But the reality of it is, is like, you know, it’s, it’s very damaging. So dare to lead, I think is a really strong book for any leader who’s looking at, how do, how do we build like real, authentic, vulnerable relationships that established trust?

Bernie Brown is phenomenal. Yes. So what, what about you? You mentioned five years from now. So what do you, where do you see yourself? Five years now? Whether it’s personal personally or professionally, either which way you want to take it? Hopefully, I’m going to be a 20% into my impact of a billion people.

Right. And when I say 20% and that’s not necessarily, I’m going to have impacted 20% of those lives, but I do believe there’s going to be an exponential effect. That’s going to come into play. I think that everything happens from a compound effect. I think five years from now, I’m going to be doing a lot of the same stuff that I’m doing today, but on a bigger level you know, everything that I’m focused on right now is about impact and what follows impact right from the business standpoint is revenue generation.

I don’t really care about the money or the dollars that are coming through my business today, other than how will it help support. Bringing a leverage into my world and bringing other smart, capable individuals to help round out the story, have more people on our team because that’s only going to exponentially create a greater amount of impact.

So where I’ll be five years from now, I’m not going to talk numbers or specifics, but I hopefully will be surrounded by a bigger team than I even have today. And we’re going to be well on our path to you know, getting to that billion over the next 25 years. I think podcasting is still going to be a strong part of that.

If I, if I had a crystal ball, I will tell you that I’ll probably have my own certainly well underway before then. I hope that within the next five years that I will also actually get my first autonomous solo book out. I’ve been a contributor in other books, but I’ve got a couple of concepts that I’m working on right now.

And that I think is going to be a big way to scale and grow not a revenue generator, but an impact generator. You know, and then just continuing to move forward on some of those same things. Reality of it is though I can have a vision for three to five years and a hundred things, a hundred variables can change.

So what I’m focused on more than anything is that billion impact number. And that path might look very different than what I think it is today. I’m very open to understanding and accepting that. How did you come up with that goal of a billion people to be impacted? I’m really big on what I call no limits goals.

Right? I think so often we protect ourselves with, with goals that we set, right. If we need to lose 20 pounds, we’ll tell ourselves we’re going to lose 10. And then if we lose eight, we feel good about it. But the reality of it is we still need to lose another 12 to be in our ideal weight. Whereas if we shoot out for 20 or 25, even if we miss that goal, we’re going to typically outperform whatever was below it.

And so this is a philosophy I have in lots of my initial planning that does not mean that’s what my three to five-year visions are, or my annual stuff is, but like the long, big audacious ones and the billion number came from the fact that we’ve got 7.2 billion people on this planet. And I viewed a billion as a pretty significant chunk of that, which would, would indicate that we’re having a, we’re moving the needle.

When I say impact, right? Like I want to reduce the suffering that exists in the world. Because that is what allows joy, freedom and fulfillment to come into people’s lives. It’s a difficult thing for them to coexist. The other piece about it is that there’s what 2.3 or 2.4 billion people that have access to technology.

Right? And so I looked at that and said, okay, the one to the 7.2, that’s a big, meaningful number. But if I look at the modern world and people have access to this, it’s an even bigger percentage of that number. And a billion is big enough that. It’s going to require all of me for the rest of my life to do it.

And so that, that is really what I’m focused on. The reality of it is I’ll never know. I’ll never know. I won’t be able to measure that. But you know, if I talk to you and you hear one thing that you like and you happen to share it, you and whoever you shared it with is a part of that billion. Anybody can see it coming on this podcast or any other show or platform that I’ve been on that billion.

And there’s a ripple effect to that. And so I just genuinely believe if I focus on impact. Relationships values and impact it’s it’s going to happen, right? Like that’s, that’s where I’m at. I’m just very clear and convicted on that’s what I’m after in my life. So my last question of the podcast is how would you like to be remembered?

It’s very connected that impact. I want to first be remembered by my wife and kids as a thoughtful, active, engaged father and husband. Right. That was, was there for the big moments that allowed them to flourish into who they actually are versus being the person who, you know, told them what they should do, who they should be and added all those layers of damage on onto my kids.

If I can have that be the only thing I accomplish. And that’s what I’m remembered for. Great. But immediately followed by that is the impact on the world. I would love to be known and remembered for reducing the suffering in the world. We have a ton of it right now. We have a ton of it in the world that we live in today.

And I genuinely believe if we can, if we can reduce the amount of suffering and if I can help people embrace the pains necessary to do that, that’d be, that’d be a phenomenal legacy. Hello? Well, Brian, it was a big pleasure to have you on the establishing your empire podcast here. I really appreciate it.

Appreciate it. A lot of value. I mean, just a lot of great nuggets here. I really appreciate your your time. Oh man. I appreciate the platform you’ve built and you being consistent with us. Cause like I said, that’s the only reason I’ve got an opportunity to be a part of your audience. And so thank you.

It was a pleasure. All right, man. Cheers.