BRENDON BURCHARD: “The most influential people tend to deliver some tough love. Tough love equals challenge. That's what it usually means. Tough love is usually challenging someone to be better, with understanding and patience and kindness, and most influential people did that for us.
And the last thing influential people do is they role model it.”
AMY PORTERFIELD: “Yeah.”
BRENDON: “They're demonstrating. Like you—this is so awesome for your community—for your community, you demonstrate it. They see Amy Porterfield show up again and again and again and again, and they’re influenced and empowered by it, just by you doing you. And so if you want to influence other people, learn to shape their thoughts, challenge them, and role model the way. If you do that, you have developed more influence.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY: I wanted to take a moment and share my newest podcast obsession. It's called the Female Startup Club podcast, and it's hosted by Doone Roisin, and this podcast is also in the HubSpot Network with me. Now, every episode is bite-sized and bingeable, with insights and learnings from the world's most successful female founders and entrepreneurs. I loved her interview with Glossier's community lead, Kim Johnson. They chatted about the five steps to build an impactful community, and you can bet I took notes and I am implementing these strategies. It was so good. So I know you're going to love this show. You can listen to the Female Startup Club wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, hey, there, friend. Happy Thursday, or whatever day you may be tuning into this episode. 2022 has been such a fun year for this podcast already, and I hope you're enjoying my new solo episodes, the ones that I call my Shorty episodes. I do them every Tuesday, and they're always a little bit behind the scenes or a little bit more personal, usually around fifteen minutes. But every Tuesday, I have a brand-new episode in addition to these Thursday episodes where I typically interview guests, and they're a little bit longer. And today you are in for a treat.
When I think of some of the most impressive entrepreneurs that I know, my guest comes to mind. There's a very good chance you've heard of him, and if you haven't, prepare your heart. His name is Brendon Burchard, and let me tell you a little bit about this guy. Oprah magazine named him one of the most influential leaders in personal growth. Oprah magazine. Forbes named him the world's leading high-performance coach. Larry King called him the world's leading life coach. Success magazine ranks him in the top twenty-five most influential success teachers. I mean, come on. He's truly an entrepreneur all entrepreneurs should learn from. He's also a three-times New York Times’ bestselling author, and his book High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way is one of my personal favorites. And he’s here today to share his knowledge and heart, and we talk about how to take struggles and challenges and traumatic experiences and turn them into something beautiful. We talk about how to become a high-performance entrepreneur, including six habits that every high performer should focus on. And I'm telling you, these six habits have revolutionized my life. This is a juicy episode, and I am so glad you're joining us for it.
Also, be sure to share this one with any friend or family member, or just anyone you think might need a little bump in their day to make them feel a little bit better.
All right. Thanks so much for joining us, and let’s get to it.
Welcome to the show, Brendon. I am so excited you're here.
BRENDON: Thank you, thank you. I wanted to do this for a long time, and I wanted to collaborate with you for a long time, so trust me, it’s my honor. I’m pumped.
AMY: Oh, my goodness. I feel the same way, and it's funny. I thought you had already been on the show. We've been friends for so very long, and I have over four hundred episodes, and I was telling one of my team members, “No, go back. He's been on the show already. This is going to be the second time, right?” She's like, “No, he hasn't,” and I couldn't believe it. So then I thought, “Okay, awesome,” because I've got a lot of questions for you. I want to cover—
BRENDON: Yay.
AMY: —a lot of stuff. If you're good with that, I'm good with that.
BRENDON: Well, listen. Actually, some people know, I rarely do interviews. Like, rarely. It's not because I'm weird; it’s because I'm also a content creator, so I'm just doing my own thing. I rarely, rarely—I did, what, like, three interviews all of last year? And none the year before? I just don’t do them. So—
AMY: Okay. I feel extra special, for the record.
BRENDON: You should. You know what? It’s totally worth it, and I love what you're putting out in the world, and you're helping a ton of people get to have the blessings of careers like you and I have. So I felt like this was hugely important, and I’ve just loved watching what you've been building and how you're leading so many people. So trust me, I'm geeking out about it. This is an honor.
AMY: Oh, my goodness. Well, thank you for saying all that. Means the world to me.
And before we even get started, I have to say, a lot of people know this story I've told many, many times about being at the Tony Robbins offices. He brought in a bunch of internet marketers to this big round oak table. I was on the side literally taking notes. All these guys went around and just talked about their businesses. And you were at that table. And so, first of all, can you believe that it's been over thirteen years that happened?
BRENDON: No, that boggles my mind. But it also shows what you can do in thirteen years.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: You know, we've all built a ton of things in there.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And finally, thirteen years later, Tony started implementing many of the things we talked about.
AMY: You said that; I didn't say that, for the record.
So, I can't even believe it's been that long, but that was where I started to think, “I don't know what these guys are doing, but I want a piece of it,” because I heard of so much freedom and growth and opportunity in those conversations you guys were having, and it was incredible. And then to know that you and I have stayed friends for so long afterwards.
I got to tell one more quick story about us being friends. You would never have remembered this, but I know I just mentioned it at a Kajabi event you and I—well, that you had that I spoke at—but I made my first three-part video series about, I guess, it would be about twelve years ago now. And I was so scared to put out the videos. And I remember like it was yesterday: I was at my son's baseball game. I had a laptop on my computer, working away because I was frantically trying to hustle, get my business up. And you sent me a text, and you said, “Your videos are really good.” And that meant the world to me that you did that. I remember it to this day because someone else had acknowledged something that I had done that was so new and exciting and different. So, thank you so much for being a part of that.
BRENDON: Yeah. Well, you've always been serving people so well and with the right intentions. And I even remember another memory of, I don't know, a couple of years ago, we were at a person’s conference, and we hadn't seen each other in years.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: We were kind of like walking backstage. We were—
AMY: Uh-huh.
BRENDON: We were walking through these aisles or this building somewhere. And I remember we went and sat, and you were going to talk about your building your business. And I don't know if we were on a panel, or I don't even remember why we were all there. I think we both spoke, and you were just sharing how your business had been building and how you were ready to go for it, and you were having a change in your structure or something.
AMY: Yep.
BRENDON: And I was just like, “Go big.”
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: “You're so awesome. Like, you can be at whatever level you choose to because you have the discipline and the care for your customers, and you've been around. So you get it. Like, go big.” And I just saw that look in your eye that so many people need to get, who are listening to this right now. That look of conviction, that look of, “You know what? You're right. This is the time. You know what? I should do this, not because I have to, but because I feel that calling to, and I know what I'm capable of.”
And most people listening to this, they doubt their capability, or they don't cheer themselves on enough to be consistent. And I think this is the time, if people are listening to this, do they have so much conviction to doubling down on whatever you're doing that's working or doubling down on whatever you're doing that's your dream or doubling down for the first time to even try your dream, this time of year, this moment, it's time for greater conviction for raising your ambition again.
And I think the last couple of years, people kind of hid back on their ambition. “Well, there's so much uncertainty. I'm unsure of how to do things,” and they discounted themselves.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And they need your podcast or a voice on your podcast to say, “You can do this, and I want to let you know you can do this at extraordinary levels.” And very few people believe that at the beginning, but then someone says, “Hey, good video,” or someone says, “Hey, listen, we all start somewhere. No matter how small you start, start something that matters, and go for it.” Raise your ambition again because so many people’s ambitions are in the dumps because the last couple years. And I’m like, “Okay. You can’t live there anymore. You can’t let that ambition be so low.”
AMY: When you say—we all know what the word ambition means. But when you use the word ambition in this way, what does that look like to you? Raise your ambition.
BRENDON: Yeah. Well, I think—you know, it’s funny because I'm a personal-development guy who started teaching marketing because people saw me selling or marketing my personal development. They're like, “Well, how do you do that?” So I never thought I'd teach marketing. But when I got in the space of teaching these things, I started to have an opportunity to coach people. Just unbelievable people. Like, unbelievable success stories, people on covers of magazines. You know, I have seven-figure clients all day long.
Now, though, what I noticed in the last four or five years, everyone wants the same things; they just don't know how much of it they want. And so for me, ambition, I always tie back to, what does every person really want? After you've had it all, what do you want? When you're rising up, what do you want? When you want a break through, what do you want?
We all want three things. First and foremost, we want aliveness. We all want to feel more alive. We all want to feel the day more. We don't want the day to be a stress, a drag, a blur, a check out. We all want to be fully engaged, fully alive, and we want that experience emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually to feel that sense of aliveness or vibrancy.
Second thing we all want is connection, deeper connection with ourselves, with the moment, and with other people. And when we lack those things, we start sensing loneliness or misery.
And we all want meaningful pursuits, things that make us feel alive and connected but give us that sense of creative expression, of fulfillment, of impact. “Oh, this is what I'm doing. It matters to me. It's important to me. I love this,” and we all want more of that.
So I tell everyone, raise your ambition on that. You can feel more alive. You can feel more connected. You can pursue things that are more meaningful. But first, you have to have that growth imperative, that is conviction, that says it's okay for me to have ambition to want a better life. I can be happy with today. I can be present today. I can be fulfilled in this very moment. I can have so much meaning right now and still want more. I asked the Dalai Lama one time, I literally asked him, I said, “Do you want—
AMY: Who says that, first of all? “I asked the Dalai Lama.” But okay, continue.
BRENDON: Oh, it’s even, people ask—yeah, I take it for granted. So long story short, I had this belief that, like in Buddhism, there's this idea that you shouldn't be attached to wanting more. That sometimes, types of desires can lead us to misery. And I just never really believed that. And so I asked if he, his holiness, wanted to be better at meditation and prayer. Well, of course. We all want something. Desire is not bad. Even the Dalai Lama wants to be better at something. That's desire. It's okay for you to have desire. Even if your husband doesn't understand your desire, even if your neighbors think you're crazy, even if the first ten comments are rude and stupid and uninformed, your desire and your willingness to stoke your ambition every day, if you don’t do that, the motivation goes away. If you don't do that, you're not consistent. And if you don't do that, you end up in a life where you feel totally caged by other people's expectations or your own fears. And so at some point, especially now, we have to go, “Okay. Wow, we’ve been through so much as a global community. It's like, let me re-orientate my life, let me recalibrate what's important to me, and let me raise some ambition.” It's okay you want a bigger business. It’s okay you want more money. It's okay you want to feel more alive doing what you're doing it. And if you don't give yourself that permission first and that ambition next, you just get stuck, and so many people are serving at way lower levels than they're capable of, and they know it.
AMY: Okay. So, that actually leads me to a question I wanted to ask you. One of the things that I think as human beings—we all deal with this, but I know a lot of my listeners deal with this—is this we get stuck in being the victim. It's like we get trapped there. And it comes up because we have got a lot of challenges. Like you just said, we've gone through two really hard years, lots of challenges, lots of struggles. And we find ourselves in this victim mentality even though we're just like, “I don't want to be here at all.” And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how to get out of that and how to move on even when you can't change everything around you.
BRENDON: Yeah. Usually, victimhood comes from lack of belonging or empowerment, because no one raises their hand and goes, “I'm a victim. Buh buh buh buh bum.”
AMY: That’s true.
BRENDON: No one's happy about the situation. What happens is by, usually, playing the victim or speaking in victim language, which is more appropriate to what's really happening, is that people receive a payoff from it. So when they complain or they say things aren't fair or they tell people you don't understand, and someone goes, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's so hard. Oh, yeah,” and they get empathy. And in that moment or those moments or that pattern, they're getting a connection hit with someone. They're receiving empathy from somebody, and that feels good. So they're letting themselves fall trap, they're letting themselves fall victim to their own pattern, that the more I share in seeking—what they're really seeking is empathy, and when they get it, now they fall in the pattern.
And that's why it's important to be around people and a peer group, to have coaches or a therapist or mentors who, when they hear that, they can give empathy, but they don't let you live there. They can give you empathy, but they're like, “Okay. Hey, you know what? The time for complaining is entirely over. What are you going to do? Let's adopt a solution mindset, not the victim mindset. Tell me what we're going to do. Let's stay on track.”
When you get discouraged, by the way, it's 1,000 percent okay you get discouraged. Everyone gets discouraged. It's just some people get discouraged and they stop. Other people get discouraged and they say that's a signal to learn and get better or reach out for help. And so if you're in that victim mindset or you get stuck there, realize you're just trying to have a sense of belonging.
A lot of people who actually are in that victim mindset, it's because they don't belong. They're in the wrong community or the wrong relationship, where when they share their dreams with other people, they keep getting put down.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And they've been put down so many times, they believe that truth versus realizing that's just the environment you're in. If we put you in this environment over here, you know, one of my events, one of your events, your community online, they're like, “Oh, wow. This is a whole different thing.” And all of a sudden they get belonging by their effort, by their progress, by their own dreams. “Oh, yeah. You belong here. That dream, that ambition you have, I know it sounds crazy to everyone else but all us weirdos, we think you're awesome.” And all of a sudden, “Oh, okay.” And now they start feeling rewarded for the desire, the consistency, the dreams, the effort by that community, and you see the victim talk start going away because now they're empowered with a better community that’s supportive, still providing empathy but a more encouraging progress. When you become victim, you're rewarded, and you receive empathy for the complaint, not the progress.
AMY: Ah, so good. So true.
You know, as you were talking, I was thinking, take me way back. How did you even get interested in studying and learning about high-performance humans? Like, how did this even come about for you?
BRENDON: Yeah. Well, I wish I could say it was some moment of inspiration. Instead, it was deep sadness. I think I was a pretty happy-go-lucky kid, and then the worst thing happened possible in high school: I fell in love.
AMY: Amen, brother.
BRENDON: And so what happened, I fell in love with this girl in high school, and she became my high-school sweetheart, and my entire life became this girl. And we were madly in love. She wanted to go to college, so I went to college. I wasn't even going to go to college. I was going to become, like, a landscaper or something. And she wanted to go to college, so I went to college. And we shared a U-Haul on the way to school. We lived in the same dormitory building. We signed up for the same classes. I was just kind of like a tag along a little bit, honestly. I didn't have a full independence, yet, of mind.
And then in that first year, she cheated and went outside the relationship with somebody I knew. And as that relationship fell apart, I fell apart. And I fell into just deep sadness that, then, turned into depression and not being able to get out of bed or shower or go to classes. And it was especially complicated because she was in the classes, so I didn't want to go to class. So I just laid in bed, in my own filth and tears, for weeks and months on end, fell into depression, then fell into suicidal thinking and suicidal ideation.
And I had friends, but they couldn't get me out of bed. I just, I couldn't turn it around, and I didn't know enough as a nineteen-year-old kid to ask for help from a therapist or something like that. And then I had—I always tell people, reading and marketing changed my life—
AMY: Really?
BRENDON: —because I still read. I still read. So I was laying there in bed, and I open up a school newspaper, and I was flipping through, and I still remember it. There was this ad in the school newspaper—and I literally can see the ad. There was this white sandy beach; this turquoise ocean; this beautiful green palm tree; perfect blue sky; and across the top, a perfect headline of all time for a kid in my position. It said, “Escape,” and then the subtitle said, “Students Needed for Summertime Jobs In the Dominican Republic.”
AMY: And you were all about it.
BRENDON: I was like, I'm from Montana. I didn't know where the Dominican Republic was, but I knew she wasn't there.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: So I took it. I went down there. And I wish I could say I was a happy-go-lucky kid in a new place, but sometimes we move or we go somewhere, but we take ourselves with us.
AMY: Ah, yes.
BRENDON: And then one night—I was basically a glorified tour guide down there was the job—and a coworker and I got in a car. He was driving, and we went down this road late at night after dropping off a client. And long story short, we came upon a corner that in the United States would have had one of those sharp U-turn-shaped signs. It didn't. And we were going eighty-five miles an hour, and we end up flipping off this road several times. And I usually tell it in a longer story format, but I learned in those moments sliding off that road and into that death’s doorway that I didn't want to die. I was a suicidal kid, but when it came to—I didn't want to die. I just didn’t know how to live. And there was a moment where I saw these images of people I loved as the car flipped several times. There was a moment I was able to pull myself out through the windshield of the car and stand up on the windshield of the car after the wreck and escaped, and there was blood coming out everywhere. And I looked down at the hood of the car, and the blood was going off, and I thought I was passing out or dying. And I just remember looking down at this blood and feeling life drain away and thinking, did I even matter? And I didn’t like that answer.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: You know, a nineteen-year-old kid. And so it forced these questions of, did I live in my life? I hadn't. I'd been thinking about taking my life, not living it. Did I love? because you see these images of people you’re going to be around, and I hadn't loved, because I was so hurt. Did I matter? I hadn't done anything. I was a nineteen-year-old kid and selfishly hurt.
And so I decided in that moment I felt like God had given me what I call life's golden ticket. You know, this second chance. And I knew I had to learn to do those things. I didn’t know how live or love or matter. So when I got back home and healed and went back to school, I started reading books on psychology, on personal development, on spirituality, on leadership, on communication, the great biographies of great figures in history. And I just—I completely dorked out into sociology or neuroscience, behavioral economics, trying to understand, how do I change? I wasn't happy.
And I figured it out, and I really changed. That sad kid became that happy kid, that awkward kid became still awkward but happy to talk with people. And I shifted. I got a great job. I became a leadership consultant for Accenture, which was one of the world's largest consulting companies at the time, still is, and had an amazing career there. And then I decided one day, you know what? Enough people said, “Tell me more about this car accident. You should write a blog, do a video. You should have a newsletter,” and finally, I listened to that.
And in 2006, I started full time as what we now call creator economy, influencer economy, thought leader, what we do. And I just wanted to help people change because I found out how possible it was for me. And I realized that everybody, if you can make self-improvement a way of life, you can become who you need to become for your calling, for your family, for your life. You can learn new skills. You can change your attitude. You can really, really transform your behaviors to be more supportive of the future you want, and that’s why we started GrowthDay, my company, was, how do we empower people to make that self-improvement process a little easier, to make the self-help stick a little bit with the right tools and the app? And I just got it. I got it, as a young man. I was nineteen. So for me, that was a long time ago.
And I learned that we can change, and when you’re inspired by that—I’ll share the one big takeaway I got from that was what I learned is really mortality motivation. Life is short.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: If you want to change, do it.
AMY: Do it. And at the time that this podcast is coming out, I mean, it's that time of renewal and recalibration and starting over, and so that message is even more impactful right now where people are. And funny enough, Brendon, this episode will come out at the end of January, so at the time when New Year's resolutions have probably dropped off, when that excitement and eagerness to be a different person has now kind of been on the back side because now they're just, like, head down, getting it done. So I feel like this message is finding people at the most perfect time, and I really feel really great that the timing is so perfect.
And while you were telling your story—and I love that story. I love how, what came out of that story, I should say—but one of the things that I love about you is that you talk a lot about habits, and I'm guessing in GrowthDay this is a topic that comes up a lot as well. And you've talked very specifically about these six habits that we should commit to in order to achieve long-term success, and I was wondering if you could give us some of those habits right now.
BRENDON: Yeah. And these six habits, I think you guys will love them. They’re based on my book, High Performance Habits—
AMY: High Performance Habits is an incredible book. Everybody should get their hands on that. Let’s just put it out there.
BRENDON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That book is a result of the world’s largest study of high performers that’s ever been done.
AMY: Wow.
BRENDON: So, academic research study from one hundred ninety countries teamed up with researchers from University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Department and UC Santa Barbara, and massive study of world’s high performers. And what we were looking for is, what were their habits, and could we correlate any of those with long-term success, well-being, and positive relationships? It was the first time anyone has ever done what you and I would call holistic success. It was, like, no one had ever actually tried to academically formulate this. They always did it around personality but not around specific habits. And we also said, “Well, how can we do around habits that are malleable,” meaning you could change them and improve them, “And you could measure them, and third parties could measure them?” Huge study. And we found out there’s personal habits and social habits that make all the difference, and there’s only six. And I didn’t do it because it was a convenient framework; I thought there’d be, like, twenty of them. But the correlations only proved out six. And so these six habits are—
AMY: But the marketer in you had to have loved that, when it was just six.
BRENDON: No, because I’d actually, I didn’t, because the teacher in me had been teaching something that was wrong for a long time.
AMY: Ohh, okay.
BRENDON: I thought if you'd asked me, I would have said creativity would be in the top five of the highest correlations to long-term success.
AMY: Okay.
BRENDON: And I was wrong. It wasn't. So part of me was, like, crap. I was, like, “Run the numbers again, guys. I've been teaching this.” And because, you know, creativity is important to me, and it is vital to success, but the kind of success we all want isn't success where we end up unhealthy and without any friends, family, or great relationships. And a lot of people have that. They have tons of financial success.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: They've got the house, the car, the money, the kids. They can afford the college and everything else. And they're silently miserable, or they're open assholes. And so—
AMY: That’s so true.
BRENDON: You’re right. It’s always one of them. And so, it's because they didn't get the other parts about our definition of high performance is long-term success while still maintaining positive well-being, which is health and happiness, and positive relationships. And so the six habits lead to that. I'll briefly go over them. We can dive in any one you want.
AMY: Okay.
BRENDON: The first one is high performers, more often than underperformers, seek clarity. They are always after the self-awareness game. They are always trying to get clarity on, what is it we're trying to do here? What's the real problem we're trying to solve? They're trying to get clarity on the roles and responsibilities. They ask more questions in meetings. And this time of year, when this podcast is out, here’s the simplest rule: do you like the momentum you have so far this year? If you do or you don't, capture this one liner: momentum is always preceded by clarity. If you don't have the momentum you want in your life or your business, clarity is missing. And so there's a discipline of seeking clarity, asking for help, doing the research, trying to figure out who you are. What are your key skills? How do you want to serve people? What's the mission here? Those simple things, it's like, you know, I did two online courses with Oprah Winfrey Network, and Oprah named them and produced them, and it was an amazing experience for me because she was, like, this huge hero.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And then I got to teach her and her senior team about this very topic about how to manage change and about habits. And if you ever work with her, she starts her meetings, all of her meetings, she starts with, what's our intention for this meeting today?
AMY: Such a great question.
BRENDON: That's a high performer seeking clarity. What's our intention here?
Second habit is generate energy. Not have energy, not hope to have it one day. High performers do things specifically to generate their mental, emotional, physical, spiritual energy. They have practices. You know, meditation, exercise, diet, sleep, nutrition. And they approach them like an athlete. The highest-performing CEOs in the world are over 60 percent more likely to work out four times a week.
AMY: Oh.
BRENDON: So it's, like, they move. They care about nutrition. It doesn't mean you don't see very unhealthy people out there. They're just not going to be a high performer. They can't sustain that decade over decade. So generating energy is really important, and you learn to bring the emotional energy to contexts, not be a taker of them. You learn to be responsible for the energy you project into the world, and you summon that energy when called upon.
The third one is to raise necessity. This one was—I didn't know what this was. So everyone else, I think, really got this one. I didn't quite get it. Necessity means I have psychological necessity for success. It means it's necessary for me to do well here because I've mentally set up the stakes that way.
AMY: Oh, okay.
BRENDON: I work with Olympians, and there's this famous Olympian I worked with, who, I went on the track with her one time. And I said, “So you know your competition. You're going to win or lose by, like, 0.001 second,” or something like that. You know, it's so close, these races. I said, “How do you know who's to win here? Who should we bet on? Maybe we can use that in your psychology.” And she says, “Well,” and she was getting down on the blocks, and she looked to the finish line, and she says, “Well, another person is going to stand here. And we're going to go to the blocks, and the person who I think is going to win that race is the person who looks at that. Some people want it. They want the gold. They want to win. They've trained their whole lives. When I look at that finish line, I say, ‘I'm doing this for my mom.’” That's necessity.
I need to do well here for my mom. I need to do well here for the kids. There are stakes that we psychologically set up. When we go in the meeting, we have the guts to remind ourselves why it's so important we win that meeting. You see all those movies of business tycoons. They go into that key meeting, and they're out there psyching themselves up, or they're stressing themselves out, which is okay, too. They're mentally preparing. They know the stakes are high, and they don't avoid that.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: A lot of underperformers are very uncomfortable with any stakes, with any pressure, and high performers tend to put that pressure in a positive way on themselves to remind themselves of the why, to make it a must to succeed. You know, all of those things where we psychologically say, “This is important. I should do well here. It's a must, not a should. I'm going to go for it because it matters.” Their self-talk ramps themselves up in a positive way to be on.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: And I didn't realize how important that one was or if you could measure it, but we did, and people love that one from High Performance Habits.
AMY: I love that one, too. And it reminds me of one of the biggest lessons I learned when working with Tony is that he talked about getting uncomfortable every single day—
BRENDON: Yeah.
AMY: —and not being scared to be uncomfortable. And I think it goes back to that habit of not being scared to put yourself in those high-stake environments because you want it. You want it bad, and you've got a why behind it. So, yeah. That—
BRENDON: Les Brown taught us all. That whole chapter, I wish I could just summarize, because Les Brown taught us you got to be hungry.
AMY: Exactly.
BRENDON: “You got to be hungry” is what psychological necessity means.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: You have a hunger for it, you stoke that hunger, and you serve that hunger, and that is how we go to another level. That’s Les Brown 101, you know?
AMY: So good. So true.
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BRENDON: The fourth one, now we go in the social realm of the habits. The fourth one is we must learn to become more productive. This is so not fun, but high performers are more productive. They understand how to increase productivity. They do things like blocking times efficiently on a calendar. They take a break every fifty minutes, which no one does, and it still blows my mind. The world's largest study of productivity ever done had over two million data points of productive people, and hands down, the most productive people take breaks between fifty and fifty-two minutes.
AMY: Really?
BRENDON: And yes. And here's the difference. Because what most people do—the metaphor I learned to teach that research from was to say, you know a high-performance race car? A high-performance race car, they’re spinning around. They’re racing around that circle. Do you notice they take these pit stops?
AMY: Yep.
BRENDON: Well, the car actually doesn't need the pit stop. It could make the mileage and could make the race. It takes the pit stop to refuel and to recharge and to refresh so it can go faster longer.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: What most people do is they go, they burn around that racetrack every day, every week, every month. They never take a break.
AMY: They think, “Well, I can do it. I can do it,” so—
BRENDON: They can totally do it. That's the thing. The human capability, your stamina as a human is ten times further than you've ever even tried. Unless you've ever run an ultramarathon, you have no idea what your capabilities are.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And so mentally, most of us have no idea how much stamina we have, but we falsely try to burn our way into it. But what you have to learn is that high performers, they recharge. It's like they take multiple pit stops throughout the day. Like, if you meet me at nine o'clock at night, I'm still this annoying, because while other people, they're done at nine o'clock. They're wiped out. They're so finished because they burned all day. I took, like, seven breaks during the day. So by the time I get to nine, my brain is still fresh. I'm still ready to go.
Paulo Coelho wrote this book called The Alchemist, and The Alchemist is the sixth bestselling book in the history of the world now. And he called me to help with a book promotion. I was like, “Why would you need my help?” But he was having trouble selling in the U.S. as much.
AMY: Wow. Is that because—we won't get into it—but you guys look up the story of that book getting published and getting out there. The fact that you were part of that is amazing, for the record.
BRENDON: Yeah. Not that book, a subsequent book. So he called me at the book Aleph.
AMY: Okay, gotcha.
BRENDON: So he was number one in the UK. He was number one in a couple other countries. He’s like, “Somehow,” I mean, this is one of my favorite stories, for those who know Paulo Coelho. I had this studio at the time. And there was, I call it my red phone in there. Like, four people in my life had this phone number. And the phone rings, so I go over and I pick it up. And “Hello, Brendon.” And I'm like, “Uh, this is Brendon.” “Yes, Brendon, Brendon, Brendon. Yes, hello. This is Paulo Coelho.” And I was like, yeah, whatever.
AMY: What?
BRENDON: I don’t think it’s him. Well, his publisher reached out to my publisher, who talked to my agent, who got the red phone number. And he basically said, “I hear you know how to launch these books. You've been, you know, all these charts and helping people do it. And the publisher recommends you. Can we talk through this?” Now at this point, he's my hero. And so when he goes, “It’s Paulo Coelho,” and he finally says it with an epic story I know is true, I go, “Really?” and my voice cracked like a sixteen-year-old kid. And I tell this story because I end up working with him. I go out to Geneva, and we work on his book campaign, his blog, and much other stuff. And it's a big deal for me. This is, like, a hero. Go to his house. He welcomed me in. We're awesome. We’re having this amazing working session, and I'm just, like, I'm finally getting comfortable there. I was kind of awkward. My ideas are flowing. We're writing things down. And all of a sudden he kind of stands up, and they bring over this little tray of food, and so I have a little snack, and then he's like, “Okay. Brendon, I'll see you tonight.” And I was like, you know, I just flew across the freakin’ world. And I said, “Oh. I’m sorry. Did I do something?” I thought I did something bad. I had no idea. And he says, “Oh, no, Brendon. Genius only operates in four hours.”
AMY: Whoa.
BRENDON: So we’d done four hours, which I wasn't even attentive to. We had been working four hours, he sent me away, we went and had dinner, and then we had another working session. And so he only works—he's literally the bestselling living author, and he only works in four-hour blocks. High performers work in short blocks of time, and then they have significant refresh. The average is fifty-two minutes. But other people might do an hour or two if their constitution leads them to that, maybe three or four. But that would be the upper upper limit before you need a significant break.
So anyway, I love that story because—
AMY: That is a great story.
BRENDON: I follow that. I practice that, too. I was, like, I do my fifty-minute breaks. Then about every four hours I go for a significant walk, or that's when I do my release-meditation technique, to reset. All these things really matter.
The next habit that really matters is we have to learn to develop influence. And you're so good at teaching this. It's like we have to have influence with people if we want them to buy from us. But we also have to have influence if you want people to believe in us, to support us, to cheer us on, to open doors for us, to invest in us. And most people have no idea how to do influence. And so we studied a lot about how high performers do it specifically, and what they tend to do, high performers, is they are, first, they are really, really, really good about teaching people how to think. If you want influence with other people, start with sharing stories and examples or insights about how they should think, meaning influential people shape your mindset.
If you think of the most influential people in your life, I guarantee they taught you how to think, how to think of yourself, other people, your job, your career, your mission, your life, your relationships. That's the critical—that’s just one—Amy, I’ve done this in my seminars around the world. Ask everyone to raise their hand if they ever had a significant mentor. They all raise their hand. I said, I can guarantee one thing they all did. Everyone universally taught you how to think. They taught you how to think.
AMY: Okay. So, give it to me in a really specific way. What's an example of teaching somebody how to think? Because there's people listening right now that want to influence in a bigger way, and they're struggling to do so. Like, make it tactical for me, is what I'm trying to say. Like, what does that look like?
BRENDON: Yeah. One time I came from college. I had this project in college, and I was pretty dejected. Other people in my group didn't believe in me. And one person made fun of me and said my idea was stupid. And I went and talked to a mentor of mine, and the mentor said to me, “You know what, Brendon? Their understanding is not required for your progress. You're always sitting around, waiting for people to approve or to say it's okay or to cheer you on, and if they don’t, you stop. But their permission, their understanding, even their empathy, it’s not required for you to still keep taking action towards what you know is right for yourself.” He taught me to look at that situation of rejection or discouragement in a different way, and go, “Oh, I don't need that.” So he shaped my thoughts—
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: —about what to do in these difficult circumstances. That person had influence.
AMY: I love that, shaping your thoughts. That’s so perfectly said.
BRENDON: Yeah, yeah. They also, another thing to have an influence with people, you have to challenge them. That's what leaders do. They challenge people. They challenge your contribution. They challenge your character, even. They challenge your relationships with other people. They challenge your output. And the most influential people tend to deliver some tough love. Tough love equals challenge. That's what it usually means. Tough love is usually challenging someone to be better, with understanding and patience and kindness, and most influential people did that for us.
And the last thing influential people do is they role model it.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: They're demonstrating. Like you—this is so awesome for your community—for your community, you demonstrate it. They see Amy Porterfield show up again and again and again and again, and they’re influenced and empowered by it, just by you doing you. And so if you want to influence other people, learn to shape their thoughts, challenge them, and role model the way. If you do that, you have developed more influence.
AMY: That is golden. That was a big takeaway from this, so thank you for that.
BRENDON: Yeah, yeah.
And the last one is just demonstrating courage. High performers, they demonstrate courage. And in the research, you know, I thought it was going to be, like, these big, profound moments they would talk about. It’s not that at all. Courage tends to mean that you take action even when you have risk or doubt or uncertainty. But what we really learned in the research was high performers tended to speak up for others and for themselves.
AMY: Ah.
BRENDON: So they were more likely, in a meeting, to share their idea.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: Even if they were introverted, they still were more likely to share. They were more likely, also, to make sure other people in the meeting, “Hey, you know what? Sarah hasn't got to speak yet. Sarah, what do you think?” Or if Sarah got made fun of, they say, “Hey, you know what? Everyone, let's take a breather here. Let's give some space here. Sarah, what were you trying to explain?” And so they speak up for other people and for themselves. That's what real courage is. I mean, yes, if you can jump across a freight train and save a baby, that's pretty cool, too. But real high performance means speaking up for one. And what I tell people all the time, do you want to know if you have courage? Do the people in your real life—your family, your friends, your peers, the people you work with—do they actually know your real thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, hopes, and needs? And if they don't, that's an area to work on, because in communicating those things, we can directly correlate that to your long-term success, income, well-being, and ability to have creative, positive relationships. And so all of these things, you know, are my passion. We teach them in High Performance Habits. When people sign up for GrowthDay, they get, like, a six-hour course on all of them. Like, I’m passionate about them because everything else, we measured a hundred other performance variables. They were all less correlative than what we found with those six high-performance habits.
AMY: Wow. The book is amazing. I love that you teach them in GrowthDay, but those six habits, literally, I think, as entrepreneurs, we should live and die by them. And that last one, the way you explained courage, totally different than any way I've ever looked at courage before. And so, you guys, like, rewind a little bit and listen to that section one more time because that was powerful, and I think it could shift a lot of lives, for sure.
BRENDON: Yeah. And imagine someone trying to do what you teach, if they won’t take that step to really express themselves, because that is scary. But I want everyone to hear, yes, there are some things in life that are scary, and there are some things in life that are required. And if you want to have a career like Amy or you want to build your business or you want to have a bigger personal brand or more social-media following, I just want to let you know, you don't get the option of not expressing yourself authentically. That's not an option on a plate. And you don't get the option of not speaking up for yourself, and you don't get—those aren't options there. Those are options in people's real lives or personal lives. Those are options in marriages. When people take them,they ruin marriages. When you speak up for yourself and you are willing to express yourself consistently, remember not only is that a demonstration of courage, which, remember, is tied to long-term success. It's measurable, but also that serves as an example to others, which is how you develop influence with them.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: You can't have real influence with other people until you learn to express yourself authentically, and the only way you learn to express yourself authentically is by expressing yourself a lot, to sort out your internal guidance system of the b.s. versus what is real. And only you can find that, and you've got to run the laps or do the reps to find what that is true for you.
AMY: So good. This has been a better conversation than I even thought it would be, but I'm not done, because I've got two more questions that I've got to run by you. And this next one, I've been dying to ask you because I'm so curious what you're going to say. So here's the deal. You know that the people that listen to this podcast are building businesses. They're creating courses and memberships and growing their email list. They're in the trenches. They're getting it going. And so they are equally interested in strategy as they are with personal development. And so my question to you is, if your entire business, your email list, your social media, everything gets taken away and you have to start from scratch, where do you invest your time and your energy if you were starting from scratch?
BRENDON: So good. Well, in this model, as we're filming this right now, there's only two things: content and campaigns. Content and campaigns. I need a content rhythm from myself, and I need campaign strategy and execution. Everything else is window dressing or ego, but those are the only two things that matter. And so if I could only do two things, those things would matter. The third thing, if I'd add on, would be collabs, collaborations.
AMY: You’re really good at collabs.
BRENDON: Yeah. I would do those. But first one, no one wants to do a collab with you if you haven't done content rhythm and campaigns, because those are the foot in the door. Those prove that you have the chops, and you're willing to do the work.
So content rhythm, the most important thing that ever learn there, for those who have gone through Experts Academy or an Influencer Summit or Influencer Pro, my programs, first and foremost, hands down, you need to understand circular viralocity. It's this phrase I came up with. I wish I had a better phrase now, in the pandemic time. But circular viralocity is what everyone understands now as content strategy, and I started teaching this in 2007. And content rhythm, what this means, with circular viralocity, is you do a long-form piece of content every single week. You take that long-form piece of content every single week, you break it up into clips and into quotes. You take those clips and the quotes, you share them all across social media, with links back to that long-form piece of content, whether that is your podcast, your YouTube show, or your blog. Then, every single week, you see which of those clips and quotes did the best. Those clips and the quotes, you pull into a Dropbox file as your Best Of. Those are the high performers. Then, every three to four weeks, you repost those, linking back again to that long-form piece of content. That never stops, and that creates what we call circular viralocity, all those little clips and quotes all linking back to the blog or the major piece. I know that sounds like “no, duh” now, but we started teaching that in 2007, right? Like, that’s how long I've been at this.
You know, everyone took some piece of that somewhere, and I think that's what's really important: that, the discipline of running that and doing that, even just one piece of content a week and cutting it up in that way and measuring it and replacing it out there and linking back.
And of course, when you link back to long-form content in some way, you have to be capturing email, which you teach so phenomenally well, and people need to listen to what she’s saying, because email is still the number one highest-value asset you will have in this career of all time.
Then, campaign strategy. I just did a big training for Influencer Pro, which people can access on, I think, on influencerpro.com. And this training is on, if I had only three campaigns to run. If I only had three campaigns to run it all, I would run a free-trial campaign, I would run a seven-dollar entrance-gate campaign, and I would run a challenge-model campaign. And those three would be the ones I would start with, and then I would listen to everything Amy says about webinars because she recently taught me about that, and I was like, “I’m going to get back in webinars. She's right. Actually, I should be back on webinars.” So, I would start with those three. I think those can really get you in the game.
And once you've done those three—I did those three for the first ten years of my career, really, and generated over a hundred million dollars with three of those. So I think the people have to get off this idea that you have to do fifty campaigns—
AMY: Agree.
BRENDON: —or twenty different things. You're so good at teaching this. Like, when you narrow down and you just started focusing on one key campaign, one key offer, your business grew up. So I think that's what people need to hear that, that simplicity and elegance.
AMY: Ah, absolutely. And the fact that you said one long-form piece of content a week, I have been preaching this for my whole entire career, you’ve got to put out original content on a weekly basis.
BRENDON: Yes.
AMY: And there’s so many people that will say, “Oh, maybe every other week, once a month.” I'm like, “No. Once a week. Get it out there.” The fact that you take it even one step further by chopping it up and doing the strategy that you explained is even better. But I love that you said that.
BRENDON: Yeah.
AMY: Okay.
BRENDON: I'll give you one quick why circular viralocity matters so much.
AMY: Okay, yeah.
BRENDON: In that, I want everyone to hear that, reposting or recycle strategy.
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: So, like, people always say, “How did you get five million fans on Facebook?” Well, for the first couple of years, I was doing four posts a day. And then, I finally was like, “Gosh, this is a lot of work.”
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: And then I realized, why don’t I just go back and grab the great ones and repost and maybe change a background or whatever. And I started putting those out. I started doing one. I just did one post a day on Facebook and Instagram. The other posts were recycled. They were previous high performers. And my page went pp, pp, pp, pp, because people, they already won. You don’t have to keep inventing. Grab the things that already won—
AMY: Yes.
BRENDON: —and keep putting them out there, but just make sure you set a schedule for it, and then you will do it, or ask your team to do it. Reposting winners is the ultimate, most important thing. Matter of fact, I just took a customer, you know, famous person in our industry. I couldn't break through on their ads, couldn’t break through on their ads, couldn’t break through… I said, “If I make you a new million-dollar ad, would you give me 15 percent?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Okay. Great.” I went to his Facebook page; I sorted his videos by the most popular videos of all time; I grabbed that; I wrote three sentences and put his link on it; I sent it back; I go, “Here you go.” And he never even thought about it.
AMY: Oh, my gosh.
BRENDON: Like, you already have winners. You already have them. And it's, like, he couldn't believe it. And I took my 15 percent, and I was happy. It's, like, people need a punch in the face to say, “Hey, you've already had winners out there.” I'm from Montana. If on a Sunday you have a garage sale and everyone shows up and it works and you make money, guess what you do next Sunday? Another garage sale. So it's, like, if you have something that works, please stick to it. Double down on it.
AMY: True.
BRENDON: Leverage it again.
AMY: You can bet that I will be sending this fortune to my content team and my marketing team because I don't think we do enough of that. Like, that is gold to me. And I'm always about, let's not reinvent the wheel. I talk about that in my launches all the time. But in content creation, I'm reinventing the wheel every single week, twice a week. So I love this. Absolutely love this.
Okay. People are going to walk away with that, and they're just going to be like, “I just got exactly what I needed and then some.”
BRENDON: Yeah.
AMY: But we're not done, because what we do here is we do rapid-fire questions, and I've got five for you before I can let you go. So are you willing to answer these five rapid-fire questions?
BRENDON: Yes, and I'm grounding myself. I suck at these. The audience can tell I'm a little long winded, so.
AMY: No, but I'm never really good at them, so it’s okay if you can’t get it right away. Okay. Number one is, who is someone that's inspiring you at the moment?
BRENDON: Someone? My wife, Denise.
AMY: Ah, that’s sweet.
BRENDON: Yeah. We just recently moved, and it was a big move—
AMY: Big.
BRENDON: —and we had to go through so much stuff to— Everyone here knows, if you move and you're a business owner, it's, like, a lot that happens. And her, just, support and diligence and just, you know, making all the ships move at the same time and keeping me in a good attitude and working through. It was hard. And she’s just so inspiring.
AMY: Ah, she's a good woman. She is.
Number two, what is the best advice you've ever received?
BRENDON: Ooh.
AMY: Or one of the best people’s advice?
BRENDON: Yeah. It’d be my dad's. So yeah, it’d be my dad's.
AMY: Your dad.
BRENDON: Yeah, my dad. We lost Dad in 2009 to acute myeloid leukemia, and right before he died—I honestly feel like this is a time that you and I were meeting—it was either, I feel like it was the year before or that year.
AMY: It was.
BRENDON: Yeah.
AMY: Because I started my business in 2009, so that meeting was in 2008.
BRENDON: Okay, yeah. So 2009, Dad got sick with leukemia, out of nowhere. Passed away. I was doing a seminar when I found out his third treatment at chemo wasn't going to work. And I called him and interviewed him. Back when—you remember doing free conference calling? You know, it's like I called, and I just wanted to capture his voice. I had no recordings of my dad, and he didn't want me to cancel the seminar and fly out. He said, “Come tomorrow,” which he was right. I did. From that moment until he passed away, we had fifty-nine days with him. But I called him, I asked him these thirty questions about life. And over a million people have downloaded this now. You can just type in my name and “life interview questions.” So type in Google, “Brendon Burchard life interview questions.” It was a free PDF. Literally, over a million people have downloaded this and asked their families these questions, because I always tell people, “If you still have your mom or your dad or a caregiver or someone you love, interview them about their life before they're gone.” And I’d just give people the questions I asked my dad. And it became a thing.
It's, like, one of the most valued piece of content I own, and it's my dad's recording. And what he shared in there was kind of—it was so wild. It was the same message as he’d shared to us throughout our lives. My dad always said the same seven things. He said it in the interview, but I never knew he was like, Oh, he's saying this on purpose. He must be. Later on, it was like, Oh, he's doing the influence model. He's shaping how he thought. Dad always said the same things throughout. He knew what he was saying: Be yourself. Be honest. Do your best. Take care of your family. Treat people with respect. Be a good citizen. Follow your dreams.
AMY: Mm, that is beautiful.
BRENDON: And he always said them. And then on this interview, he kind of just, he said them, and he was so casual. And it wasn’t until he passed away later and I was listening to it. I was like, Wow, he knew he was seeing those. I mean, he—I never, you know, your parents say things to you, but I never thought he had a plan about it. And those pieces of advice are the most important I’ve ever had, and I’ll just share with you I think that was the most shared piece of content I’d ever done in my entire life. I just shared my dad’s seven things he taught me, there. And that’s probably my most proud piece of content. Out of everything I've ever done, that's the thing that went the most viral.
AMY: Oh, my gosh. I love that. We're going to link to that in the show notes too because I want everyone to get their hands on that. That is beautiful. Absolutely. He was an influencer before it was even cool.
BRENDON: Totally.
AMY: He knew what he was doing there.
Okay. So let me—we're almost done with our questions. Do you have a favorite book or a favorite resource that you could share with my audience?
BRENDON: On any topic, or…?
AMY: Well, you've got a favorite resource. Actually, this might be a really great time. I wanted to ask you about this. Tell everybody about GrowthDay. It's a really cool thing. So could that be your favorite resource? Can I choose it for you?
BRENDON: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, yes, definitely, now it's my favorite resource because I literally use it three times a day. So GrowthDay is an app. You can go over to growthday.com. There’s fourteen-day free trials, and it's an all-in-one personal-development app. And so I used to—like, I'm a super personal-development geek, which everyone knows. But you know, I've got my personal-development journals over here; my planner’s over there. I signed up for these courses by these people over here in their own platforms. I'm on, like, ten different Facebook groups. Basically, all my personal development is scattered.
And a couple of years ago I said, “Why isn't there a platform, a single platform, for personal development, where I can do my personal-development journal but not be wondering what to write, being prompted with personal-development prompts to actual journal on things that would gain self-awareness and self-mastery? Why isn't there a plan that's set up in a way that I can capture goals the way the personal-development people would? I want to learn from live coaches and be inspired, but in one place. And it's kind of like if MasterClass, instead of having courses, just had their mentors teaching live and you could interact with them.” And so the idea of GrowthDay was born, and that’s all I focused on, all I’ve done the last two years.
We started a software company. We spun up the engineering teams. We built an entire team and company around it. And now it's, I mean, hands down, when people go in there, and they take courses, like, Whoa. I can save my notes, watching a personal-development course? And they’re time coded? And all of the notes across all of your classes roll up to your profile so you can click your notes and see all of the personal-development—
AMY: So cool.
BRENDON: —notes you've ever taken?
Like, we have a course from Larry King on communication, right? You take Larry King's communication course; you take notes; it time codes it. Later on, like a month later, you're trying to, “Oh, how do I do that interview?” You go back; you click on your note. It opens that video to the exact, precise moment where you took the note. I mean, it’s… And then, there's community chat with it, too, so you're sharing and learning. If we had personal-development challenges, what would they look like? All of that we put in GrowthDay.
It is my resource I go to because I journal twice a day, because in the morning, under our journal, we have a button that says Morning Mindset, and it asks me questions to prompt me to get me in a good, positive mindset.
AMY: I love journal prompts. That's so fantastic. I'm always stuck on what to write.
BRENDON: Yeah, me, too. And then at the end of the day, we have daily life scores, and I score my life at the end of the day. And it creates recommendations and trend lines for what's happening in my high-performance habits as well as sleep, diet, mood, stuff like that. So it’s like my dashboard for my real life, so that’s GrowthDay.
AMY: GrowthDay is amazing. I'm so glad you—
BRENDON: Aw.
AMY: —shared it here. So, thank you. And I'm so glad you created it. It is really beautiful.
Okay. So let's see here. If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?
BRENDON: I’d just say feel the day.
AMY: Yeah.
BRENDON: Be mindful enough to make sure you feel the day, feel the emotions of it, feel the connection with it, feel the relationships, feel every moment. Just feel it. You know, life goes by real fast. You know, achievements will happen if you have clarity and you follow the high-performance habits. You’ll have great relationships if you learn to be there. Most people in relationships, you can repair a lot of relationships if you just teach each person to feel the moment when they're together, because all we want with other people is for them to feel that they feel us feeling them. You know what I mean?
AMY: Yes, yes.
BRENDON: It's, like, that vibe. There's no way to explain other than it's that feeling thing. And I think that most people, they have all the reason and all the success and all the abundance and all the food in the kitchen and the pantry. And when they're unhappy, it's because they've forgotten themselves to bring the joy and to feel the moment. And you have to pause and teach yourself to do that, to get mindful enough to be in a positive, grateful, high, intentional, optimistic place. That's the work of personal development.
AMY: Yes. Fantastic.
And your final question is, what is your definition of a great leader?
BRENDON: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, just throw that one in. That’s a whole seminar. Okay. A great leader. Well, I believe that—well, I'm going to take all of my leadership training and bust it down into five words.
AMY: Okay.
BRENDON: All a leader needs to know is this phrase. And I'm actually working on a book on this topic, which you didn't know, so this was not [unclear 1:05:36]. This is great.
AMY: No.
BRENDON: But okay. All leaders will get this as soon as I say it. People support what they create.
AMY: People support what they create.
BRENDON: A leader's job is to help people co-create a vision, co-create a plan, co-create the journey. And when you have the people supporting something because they had the idea or they were involved in the idea or they're involved in the journey in a meaningful way, they support it. They have skin in the game. They have passion for it. And great leaders do that. They create a process of interaction and influence in which other people are not followers but, rather, collaborators. And when leaders help people become collaborators toward a shared and mutual vision, then we all want to do it. And it's hard to do that. It's easy to be a figurehead; hard to be a leader. It's easier to be a dictator; harder to be a leader. But the ones who change the world, they tend to lead in that way, where they understand the importance of people support what they create. So they're always looking for ambassadors, always making other people champions, always encouraging and empowering people and enlisting people with the content, knowledge, relationships they need. They're really good at empowering people to build the journey along with them and then beyond them.
AMY: Ah. That is fantastic. I love that. I'm going to use that as I lead my own team, and I know a lot of leaders out there are going to just snatch that up and start implementing it. That is a beautiful message.
And I’m excited about this book. You’re going to have to come back on when that book comes out so we can talk more about it.
BRENDON: I’ll do it.
AMY: Okay. I love that.
Thank you so very much, friend. This has been such a treat. I love chatting with you. I’m so glad that our friendship has been such a long, wonderful friendship. Whether we’ve been in touch a lot or not in touch, I feel like I haven’t missed a day with you. Thank you so much for doing this.
BRENDON: I love that you're leading so well, Amy. I just want to give you props. Like, this community has—I hope everyone here gets the value of what you're doing and shares the message of what you're doing, whether this episode or other episodes, because it's so rare to have somebody who has been here doing this this long, shares openly this much information, brings on this kind of caliber of folks who she's always interviewing, and it's just role modeling the way. So I appreciate you, Amy. Thank you for having me.
AMY: Thank you, friend. All right. I’ll talk to you again soon. Take care.
Holy cow. I am so fired up right now, and I hope you are. Here's the thing. As I was listening to Brendon throughout the entire interview, I was thinking, I really needed to hear this conversation right now. I think it's going to help me just recalibrate even a little bit more. I know we just entered into 2022, and I did a lot of recalibration, and I feel re-energized in the new year. But, also, there's a few things that I can refine even more, and I really found a lot of takeaways in this episode that I'm going to implement in my own life.
I think my biggest takeaway from this conversation was when Brendon was talking about courage and how a high performer is courageous, but he talked about it in a way that's so different than I've ever thought about it. And the funny thing is, I have an episode coming out in a few weeks, in February. It's a Shorty episode where I'm sharing with you the five feelings that I'm going to focus on. Like, five ways I want to feel in 2022. And then I'm sharing with you a bunch of my goals that I've set. So that's an upcoming episode in February. And one of the feelings that I want to feel again and again and again is courageous. So when he talked about it, it really hit home for me.
Also, I love that throughout the entire episode in, like, the sweetest way possible, Brendon kind of gave us the kick in the pants that we needed. Did you feel that way? I know I did.
Okay. So, here's the thing. This was a special episode, and because Brendon and I go way back and because I got to dive into some of these questions I've been wanting to ask him for forever, I just want to make sure that you walk away from this episode taking action. So here's what I want you to do. I want to hear your biggest takeaway or your aha moment or what you loved most about this episode. So what I want you to do is take a screenshot of this episode on your phone. If you're listening to it on your phone, just take a quick screenshot, and then post it on Instagram and tag me. So I'm just @amyporterfield on Instagram. Tag me and tell me your favorite part of this episode, your biggest takeaway, your aha moment. You don’t want to do it publicly? You can even send me a DM, whatever works for you. But if you do send it on Instagram publicly, I will absolutely be reposting a lot of those and sharing those.
Okay. So, as always, I’ll link to his information in the show notes. All the different links he talked about, all the different books and resources, GrowthDay, all of that, I’ll put in the show notes. So be sure to head on over to my website to take a look at all of those goodies.
All right. If you would be so kind to share this wonderful episode with a friend or two, I’d be forever grateful. I have big things coming to this podcast this year, and I want to make sure it can impact the lives of entrepreneurs all around the world. So if you could help me with that, I’d be so forever appreciative.
All right, my friends. I’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.
