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Stop Drifting Through Your Life · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: A lot of people look successful from the outside and still feel like their life is getting away from them. They are busy, capable, even accomplished, but they are drifting in the areas of life that matter most. And usually the problem is not effort. It is that they never stop long enough to decide who they actually want to be and how they want to live. So with that, I'm excited to be joined today by Stan Gibson. Stan is a coach and author who helps people get honest about where they're living on autopilot. and build a more intentional life from the inside out. In our conversation, we discuss what changes when you stop treating intention like a nice idea and start using it as a real operating system for your relationships, your work, your health, and the way you face time, loss, and identity itself. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now here is my conversation with Stan Gibson. Stan, thank you so much for being here. speaker-1: Thank you. I'm excited. speaker-0: You did a podcast with a friend named Jerry Foster. And in that discussion, the core idea that came out for me is that when death becomes certain, life becomes rich. Can you share that story of your friend and kind of how that idea came up in that conversation? Like what actually changed in how you were living and making decisions because of that idea? speaker-1: You know, this is such a great story, Ian, because I'll tell you what, this was probably in my late 40s, somewhere around maybe 50. My wife and I, went out to dinner and we're just sitting there, Ian, and Jerry walks over and Jerry's not just another guy. Jerry is this CEO of this financial firm. He's this foster parent. this, he and his wife have a marriage ministry all over the world. And I mean, Jerry's pretty special. Jerry is just one of those dudes. And, and my wife and I had been so fortunate because we had, you know, taken a few little many vacations with them probably five, 10 years earlier and we just lost touch. We lost touch with Jerry. And so seeing him come across the restaurant and it was just great to see him. It was just great. We talked for about four or five minutes, caught up and then he said, I'll see you later. And so, so as he took off, he stopped and he turned around, he came back over and he said, you know, I didn't know whether to say this or not, but I think I need to tell you. He said, I see I've got cancer. I've got a 50-50 chance of living for the next five years. And you know, when somebody says something like that and you don't know really what to say, before I could even get anything out, he said, ⁓ wait a minute, I didn't come over to make you feel bad. I want to let you know that the last 90 days have been probably the best of my life. And he said, you know, I've had these conversations with my wife that for as close as we are, we've never had. I've taken my kids all on separate vacations and asked him, what do need from dad before he leaves this? this world. And he said, you know, being the CEO, and I just have a lot of control at my financial firm. He said, you know, I started thinking about it. There are younger people that can do a better job than I can. He said, I actually elevated someone into the CEO role and I took the chairman position. And then he leaned in and he just said, Stan, when death becomes certain, life becomes rich. When death becomes certain, life becomes rich. And right there, it just hit me. Why do we wait for a doctor? to give us this prognosis before we start living a rich and intentional life. Fortunately, Jerry's still with us. I just had Jerry on my podcast and he's had many scares since then that maybe God could have taken him. But I'll tell you what, he's still with us. He is an amazing human being. And as I've laid out all the things I work on with my clients, he said, everything you're doing, with your clients is what keeps me alive. Because I get into all the neuroscience, I get into everything around quality, rich, living, ⁓ just living that rich and intentional life. So that was my story with Jerry and I still keep in touch with him, but it was just one of those special moments, speaker-0: For me, my introduction to the idea of what a productive relationship with the idea of death, I guess, looks like. We're just using death, the reality of death, the inevitability of death, as this way to keep you in the present moment and keep you focusing on the most important things in life. It came to me when I started studying Stoicism at the end of college. The idea of memento mori, or that mantra of memento mori is really... big in that school of thought. And it definitely had a pretty profound impact on me. But one of the things that I find difficult, it's easy to forget about it. Right? It's easy to just go right back into getting caught up in all the things day to day and, you know, veering away from those things that when you are in that moment where you're acknowledging the reality and inevitability of death, you ask yourself what really matters to me in life, you know, family. my health, doing the things that I love, doing the things that I care about, it's easy to get caught up and then stray away from that. So how do you try and keep that frame or stay reminded of that reality? speaker-1: Like I say, I'm in my sixth decade. so, you know, it probably gets a little more realistic for me, although I never think about it because, one of my affirmations is I'm ageless. And I feel that way because I mean, I'm in boot camp every morning with 20 year olds and, know, they're looking at me like, who is this crazy dude over here that's, you know, lapping us. you know, age is a state of mind. But to your point, the way I work with individuals is I believe fully in intentionality. And again, not just because the book is called Living a Rich and Intentional Life. walk through life, there's two different numbers. One, when we make purchases, 90 % of them are subconscious. They're there. You we just make them. We don't even think about it. When we're living the rest of life, it's about 60 40. It's about 60 % conscious, 40 % subconscious. So we spend 40 % of our time just walking around, just basically having no plan and waking up and just moving throughout the day. So one of the things I do again is I am so locked in on neuroscience, intentionality, And how do we, it doesn't matter if you're in a Gen Z, if you're a millennial, I were, do a lot of group coaching too. And we work a lot on intentionality and it really starts with self-awareness. It really starts with knowing who you are and who you're not. I always say you want to be the Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky of your swim lane. You want to know yourself so well that you can win any race by five, 100,000ths of a second. Cause you're that good in that swim lane. But the beautiful thing about knowing that swim lane Ian. is that you know that you might not be as good in the breaststroke or you might not be as good in the butterfly. So how do you surround yourself in life with the right people to create this orchestra of the trombones and the, you know, the percussions and all the things that just make beautiful music. have a journey that I take people through because you don't have to think about death to think about intentionality. I'm working with a younger client right now who's done very well. Seven figures, I mean the whole bit. And life got away from her. Life got away from her. And you know, her job became her identity. She's reached back out to me now and just said, you know what? It's not that I have a bad marriage, but I don't have a great one. It's not that I'm a bad mom, it's just I'm not a great one. I just don't have that intentionality in my life. I've let my job take over. So we're going through this process, not only of self-awareness, but we're also taking a look five years out. We're taking a look, not What is she going to do five years out? We're taking a look as though she's already successful five years out. Who are the people that got her there? What were the relationships she developed? What were the routines she started to do? What did she do physically that started to give her energy again and make her just a believer? We take a look at self-awareness. We take a look at journaling. And then the key to this is then we move into the next step in and we move into where you start to create identity. You see, our brains have an amazing way. of creating a new identity. We remember things between four and seven years old. And from that time on, people start putting thoughts in our head that we think are truth. And we make them truth. But in essence, they're just sitting back there in the amygdala. know, 70 % of our thoughts are fear-based. So that's where I start working with people and saying, let's identify what's been placed in your head. What are those limiting beliefs? And let's create a script. Let's create some affirmations. Let's create an identity of how you're going to choose the keyword, choose to show up. And when we create that script, then we start the next phase, which is therefore I must, therefore I must, what do you need to do to come back in and make sure that that script becomes reality? And then there's a third piece to this, which either scripture or it's quotes, but, but I haven't come up with scripture or quotes to kind of back in. And you confirm and reaffirm these affirmations and these strategies. And the beautiful thing about the CNN, and I'll quit after this is once you've done this and you can, you can put this on your recorder, on your phone. You listen to it every morning before you get out of bed. You start to listen to your 90 day strategy. You start to see it, let the brain take over versus having to think and living in the subconscious. That's a lot of what I do in helping people with intentionality. It doesn't matter what age you are and whether you are fear death or not. You have to start living with intention. There's a book by Victor Franklin talks about Satan loves a drifter. Anybody who drifts through life. That's exactly what he wants. We can't drift through life. were made for so much more than what we've ever been able to do on our own. So I believe in that and I'm a strong encourager. I'm a visionary encourager. That's, that's my gift. And that's what I do. speaker-0: This is a message that's shown up frequently in the podcast recently. It feels like almost, you know, the universe or the monad or whatever is trying to tell me something. But, ⁓ something that rhymed with what you just shared that a recent guest also brought up is that the next 20 years are going to happen, whether you're intentional or not, right? Time is going to continue passing every day is going to continue happening, whether you're intentional about it or not. only way to create a life that you want. is to first answer the question of what does that look like and then be intentional about moving in that direction and making that reality happen. As I've gotten older, I've recognized that this stuff really works. I'm 26 now, so I by no means have anything figured out. But if I think back to myself when I was in college, maybe I was interfacing and being confronted with these ideas of affirmational practices or... being intentional, Like all that stuff sounded like woo-woo. Like there's got to be some kind of like different, more tactical, of like real world scientific strategy. Like why does this stuff work? Why do these affirmations, why do these things work from a neuroscience perspective? speaker-1: You know, one of the things that I talk about is there's a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. And it's kind of been my wife and I's go-to for years. And it's one of those things that, know, if you put it on your audio books, you can plug in, whether it's the eighth chapter, the fourth chapter, the 12th, it doesn't matter. It's still going to be relevant. This is back in the 1950s. So this was quite a long time ago and he was a plastic surgeon. you know what? Person has a crooked nose. They want it fixed. Their self-esteem will get better. You know, they've got this scar they want taken care of. Well, I just know everybody's looking at that scar. just know they are. And so, you he'll take, he fixes a body part and people expect their self esteem to, to rise. Five to six months later, they're right back where they started. The scar didn't make any difference. The nose didn't make any difference. It's all on the inside. And when he saw that he got out of the business and then he got into, again, psycho cybernetics. He got into visualization. He got into, there's a concept called servio mechanism and the servio mechanism, and I've taken many clients through this. When you become so definitive and you've got great clarity around the future, it's kind like a heat seeking missile. If it knows its coordinates, if it knows its target, winds will come and it'll shift to the left, it'll shift to the right, it'll go off target, but it always comes back in focus and it'll hit its target. And that's what the Cervio mechanism is. so when I have clients and they know what they want, I'll have them describe it in great detail. I mean, I had a client one time, She just knew she was going to move to Miami and I had her, you know, what's the color of your house? What color are the shutters? mean, tell me about the walkway when you walk up. What do you feel? What do you experience? The more you can put a lot of this stuff into the prefrontal cortex and into the parts of the brain, it's just, it's a servomechanism. It's a heat seeking missile. It just starts getting you there. Think if you didn't have it in, do your point a few seconds ago in, you know what? The next 20 years are going to happen whether you have a plan or not. It's called the reticular activator. It's a part of the stem of the, ⁓ of your neck where things move from the subconscious to the point of making a choice. What do you want the future to look like when you make a choice? Then you can put it into the prefrontal cortex. can put it in the limbic system of the brain to where now it's got a target. And again, you can choose how you're going to show up. You just have to do the work. It isn't a name it and claim it. It's a, I am. I embrace, I am the type of person who, it's not I'm going to get there, someday I'm going to. That's code for never. It's I am, I am, I embrace. You know, one of the things you talked about, death, had the same experience. ⁓ My wife, we've been married for 44 years and eight years ago, I can still remember walking out of the doctor's office and she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We were fortunate to kind of come in and out of remission. We're never out of it. We're always six months away from finding the next scan as to what we're going to find out. But it made me realize I know myself so well. So I give a lot of assessments to my clients. give Clifton's Strength Finders. I give something called the Genius Spark. I give the Enneagram. There are many different assessments I give, but I know myself. And one of the things I am, if you're not familiar with Enneagram, there are nine, it's 1500 years old. It's so unbelievably accurate. It's your DNA. And I'm an Enneagram 7, so I enjoy the future more than I do the reality. You know, I'm sensitive to pain. So when I hear that my wife has cancer, the reality is very hard for me to take. So what do I do? I've now got to take the medicine that I've been given everybody else. And so my affirmations, and it was the same with my mom, because I knew my mom was failing and she was one of my best friends. And I knew that she was going to transition out of this earth pretty quickly too. These are areas where I've had to work personally on myself. And, know, one of my affirmations, yeah, I embrace all seasons of life, including living, dying, death, and living in eternity with Jesus Christ. That is an affirmation that I make. Therefore I must, I have certain strategies that I do to reframe my brain. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. And we're all going to go through pain. It's, it's, it's, it's inevitable, but suffering is a choice. And so how I program an architect, my mindset, my mom did, she passed away last year. And I don't think I'm avoiding grief. It's that I have conditioned myself to where it was a celebration. I'm glad she lived. I'm not sad that she died. I'm glad that she lived. And someday it'll be that way with my wife. Everybody's got something going on in their life that they need to condition. And what I do is. I work with people in five areas of their life around all of this. The first is their career. The second is going to be either spiritualism or purpose. They need to have one of the two. Maybe it's both. The third is going to be, of course, I geek out on all the neuroscience around well-being, working out, fitness, nutrition, visualization, meditation, you name it. We can talk about how the body works and I'll be a very happy camper. The fourth is relationships. What would it look like if you were a better partner? What would it look like if you were a better parent? What would it look like if you were a better colleague? And let me tell you something about relationships. If you've got good relationships in your life, the science will tell you that you can live 67 % longer. Relationships are threefold over just eating well, sleeping well, and all the other things. So, you know, they always say you can die of a broken heart. Well, you really can. The reason is When you're going through a divorce, you're going through a bad relationship, you're going through whatever, your blood vessels start to restrict. And when they start to restrict, it's harder for the blood to get to your heart. That's why they say you can die of a broken heart. There's so many things that I go through mindset and everything with my clients because I want them to start to experience energy. want them to start to experience being a better partner. I want them to start to experience this, this wonderful mindset. And that's really why I wake up in the morning. That's my purpose. And that's, that's my, ⁓ In Japan, they call it ikigai, which is a reason for waking up in the morning. And if you ever notice, there is no word in the Japanese dictionary for retirement. It doesn't exist. But ikigai is what they refer to. That's the reason for waking up. speaker-0: Yeah, that Icky Guy exercise is ⁓ transformational. If you can work through it, it's a complicated exercise to go through, right? Because your Icky Guy, your reason for being is the overlap between what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs. And those are complicated questions to answer. It's like, what do I love? It requires a lot of stillness, internal reflection, asking of others of like, hey, what do you know about me? What do you think I'm uniquely gifted at, I guess? So it's kind of weird questions to ask people. Now that exercise going through that is super powerful and it was actually going through that exercise got me doing what I'm doing today. I first came across that exercise when I read The Five Types of Wealth by Shaquille Bloom, which is one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years. And in that book, he introduces you to the idea of the icky guy and tells you to go do that exercise. So highly recommend everybody do it. I actually created a companion tool for that book that guides you through the process of doing that exercise. So instead of you kind of sitting there and having to go through it on a notebook and then find the overlaps. I have a tool that will kind of guide you through that reflective, that internal journey of exploring what you love, what you're uniquely good at, what you believe the world needs, find the overlaps to uncover what your Icky Guy, reason for being is. And I love sharing that with people. So I'll leave the link to that tool in the description if you want to check it out. There were five areas of life that you work with your clients in. There's the career, there's spirituality and purpose, there's health, there's relationships. What was that fifth one? Mindset, okay. speaker-1: Mindset. speaker-0: Correct me if I'm wrong, I just want to kind of understand kind of how you architect this client journey. You kind of have to get on the same page and speak the same language as far as like the things that you're going to be guiding them through, right? This idea of intention, living a life of intention, which is going to be your book. So they have to understand the power and the reality and the neuroscience behind that. And then the practice of how you effectively navigate through that. And then you see these five areas, career, spirituality, and purpose. personal health, relationships, and mindset as kind of the five big buckets of life. And then what I imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, but you would then guide your clients through creating some kind of imagined future for all five of those categories. And then you work with them to kind of create that imagined future, that ideal future within each five of those categories, is that right? speaker-1: spot on and to maybe just kind of, you know, just frame it up a little bit. That first part can't be overlooked. And that is self-awareness. We go through one thing that's called the Clifton Strength Finders, which is 34 strengths. There's five strengths that you own out of those 34 that are just yours. They're uniquely yours. But then we do something a little bit more unique in, we take those five strengths and we put them into a model where we can create a sentence for each one of these, unique sentence. for each of your five strengths and that creates a paragraph. And now we have a very granular idea of how you're showing up at your best. And just like any muscle that's overworked, we take those five strengths and we do the same thing on the kryptonite side. So those five strengths, when you're not sleeping well, when you're not eating well, when you're not at your best, those five strengths become your kryptonite. So now we've got your Clifton strengths, we've got your genius paragraph, your kryptonite paragraph. Then we go into the Enneagram that I talked about. And then I go into actually even a third assessment called the culture index. And when I can take these and then I can use AI to start to create an integrated model of who you are in every aspect of your life, whether it be career, whether it be as a father, whether it be as a husband or wife, we create a very, very crystal clear idea of who you are at your core and how you act under stress, how you act under pressure. And so now we know. that when you get into these situations, we have the antidote, we talk about them. That is step one. Step two then again, we go back into this journal, we look five years out. We don't say, what do you want to do in five years? No, we assume you're already a success in five years. Let's work backwards. Tell me what were the critical relationships that you developed along the way? What were the critical routines that you did in the morning and the evening on the weekends? How did you architect your life to be such this powerful success? And then the third piece, go into the five areas that you just talked about and it's creating the identity that you want to have in each of these five areas. What's the identity? How do you want to show up in your relationships? How do you want to show up in your career? And when you start to do this, then we create 90 day strategies. I like to put them into quarters because they're easier to do. When you start to say, therefore I must over the next 90 days, here's what I must do. Now we've got the framework for a strategy. We've got the framework for how you're going to show up, what the strategy is to get there. And then we're going to add some quotes to be able to come back and reaffirm. And then the whole genesis behind, there's two things. Number one is transferring this information to your calendar in your top three priorities, creating what I call CEO time, where you just absolutely have to, you have to carve out two to three hours. You know, four out of the five mornings, you have to carve out some time on the weekends to reflect back, reflect forward and look at these documents. You've got to have structure in routines and systems. But then you also, read, you read these identity statements, you read these strategies and you record them on your phone. I get up before my wife and I just reach over and I just put my earphones in, hit my phone and I just hit record. And every morning I'm just listening. I'm listening to that servo mechanism. I'm listening to what this 90 days is going to look like. You know, how many clients, you know, I'm going to be reaching out to, how am going to be addressing my wife each and every day with compliments? How am I going to be a better partner? How am I going to be, you know, all these things? And so I'm listening to it. And so I'm creating this way for my brain to start to take over with intentionality. And so that's a lot of the key aspects of what I'm working with clients on now and working with a lot of Yeah, you'd be surprised, Ian, there's a lot of people out there that look, you know, very successful entrepreneurs and corporate leaders that are hurting on the inside. speaker-0: Yeah, living out of balance for sure. And I've been there. There are seasons of life that, you know, in my young career, in my young life, I've just placed way too much emphasis on one bucket at the sacrifice of, you know, relationships or my health. And then when you're out of balance, it's really easy to just stray off course. And then I'm way over here and it's like, how did I get here? Right. And then you got to, you know, be really intentional about getting back on track. But one of the ideas that I think we've really underlined in you sharing this is the shift of going from I can, I should, I will, to therefore I must. Why is that shift so important? speaker-1: It's called ontology, but there is such a science and it's in the military. Anywhere you look at people that do transformation in the brain, it's never a place to get to. And it's not a fake it till you make it, but you have to start believing you're already, you're already there. Back in my corporate days, you know, when I would park, I was probably about, ⁓ I don't want to say a quarter of a mile, but it was a long walk, especially in the winter in the Midwest. seemed longer and You know, I knew that the day was going to be tough ahead. From the time I got out of the car door, I would start to see I'm walking and talking with confidence. You know, I'm blessed with the Holy Spirit. I am walking and talking. And I started actually walking with confidence. And in my mind, I was talking in exclamation points, not in question marks. And I was doing this all the way from the car through the parking lot, up the steps. And I was doing this every single day. By the time I sat down, I was conditioning my mind, not of a place I'm going to get to. I was conditioning my mind of who I am. And by the time I was getting on the phone and I was, I was in meetings, you know, I was speaking with confidence. I was speaking with authority. I was speaking and talking and I had this mindset and it was an intentional mindset. So this bit of I must, it's nothing more. If you just name it and claim it and say, I am whatever it won't last. The brain isn't designed that way. The brain is designed to take on an identity. but then do the work to be able to go ahead and reinforce it. And that's the therefore I must, there has to be work involved. There has to be some action in order to reinforce the identity. And when done long enough, and sometimes that can be 21 days, sometimes that can be two and a half years. You know, even alcoholics, people that are going through addiction and stuff like that. It's the same process. It's a place that they're coming from, not a place to get to. speaker-0: There's a famous line asking a former alcoholic, do you feel like you're going to be sober, you know, again, for the next 10 years? You've been sober for 10 years. Will you be sober for another 10 years? And he says something along the lines of, I'm still an alcoholic. I just haven't had a drink. And my goal isn't to be sober for another 10 years, is to be sober for one more day. And that's their focus. Is there a part of this system that you got clients through instead of like you break it down into just focusing on just do it for one day. Don't try and say like, I'm going to do this for 10, 15 years. Just do it for one more day. speaker-1: That's why we listen to our affirmations every morning. It's got to be reinforced. It's a daily thing. If you filled out, if you did everything that I'm talking to you about, and you put it on the shelf, you know what's going to happen. We've all done that. This has to be intentional. Just as you just said, each day is an intention. Tomorrow starts tonight. Next week starts this week. Next month starts this month. Next quarter starts this quarter. You've got to be very intentional. You know, I personally, And I tell my clients this too, or I ask them to carve out that time. To me, Saturday morning, know, nobody's up yet. I'm having coffee. It's my free time. What a beautiful time to sit there and reflect on the past week, prepare for the week ahead. Take a look at any of your affirmations. Take a look at your life. Journal it out. love journaling. Journaling is such a wonderful experience. You know, gratitude journaling. I sit there every morning and every morning I'll put down my results and you know, what did I do the day before that? you know, was intentional or unintentional that either gave me a good score or bad score. One of the three things that I'm grateful for, can be so minuscule. You know, tonight I'm going to, to, watch my two four-year-old grandsons, you know, skate. They're trying to get them ready for hockey. What a beautiful thing. What a, how can you not have gratitude around something of watching these little kids go out and fall on their tails and get right back up. And the only thing they're worried about is where are we going to eat afterwards? So having this gratitude journal is so powerful. And then just, you know, what are the challenges? What are the things that I'm going to work through today? And what's come to my mind? You know, what's, what's God put on my mind that I need to get out on paper so that I can, I can wrestle with it. ⁓ it can be pretty tough to go through a really strict morning routine, but I tell you what, from the time I get up, it's mind, body, and soul. It's everything. It's from listening to my affirmations. It's jumping out and going to some kind of a either yoga or a bootcamp or something sitting there and journaling, reading my scripture, getting dressed. and being back ready to go CEO time to where I've got that time. Again, I'd already planned the night before what I was going to do the morning after. So there's no surprises. And so you've got to have that intentionality of every day, just like the alcoholic. You've got to be in intention. If you are interested in what I'm talking about, go to leadwithstan.com, leadwithstan.com. I have so many tools I'd love to give you because I just love to develop tools, but I've got something called the Double Down On Me tool. I wanted to create this list of sleep, nutrition, meditation, all these things. What's the neuroscience behind it? What are the resources that you can go to to learn more about it? So I created these two pages of this PDF and it's the Double Down On Me. So if you go to leadwithstan.com, leadwithstan.com. No questions asked. I mean, I will throw it over the digital airwaves and you'll have it in two seconds. And if you're interested in the book, it's on Amazon, Living a Rich and Intentional Life. speaker-0: First, I want to get at the disconnect that you saw in the world and the people that you were helping and the people that you were serving that compelled you to write this book, right? But to do this work that you're doing, where is this disconnect, you believe, coming from? And you talked about the idea of we're wired from a young age, but we're never taught this stuff. Why is that the case? And what do you see happening in the world that compelled you to write this book and do the work that you're doing? speaker-1: One of my episodes in my podcast was having a plan B. And the reason I talk about having a plan B for any listeners out there is because the world doesn't always work out the way you think it's going to. was in corporate America for four decades. And as an executive, they wanted me to work on which ones would get terminated because they were going to go through a downsizing. And I tried to be so generous because I knew the ones that wanted to be terminated because they were at retirement age. They were going to get a package. It was going to be a beautiful thing. And so when that day came, it was going to be glorious, you know, because again, I wasn't going to have really bad news to give. Little did I know I'd be getting the call myself. Sometimes you don't end things on your own terms. Unfortunately, you know, I'd done well, I'd saved and, you know, did what I could. But the thing I, I remember is Everybody was devastated but me because you know what? was February 21st of 2021. And on February 22nd at eight o'clock in the morning, I'd already had a book written, which I had done the year before. I'd already had a website. I'd already been coaching clients before and after work. I had already been doing motivational speaking for 10 to 15 years. I'd already been living my dream on my terms. And that's what I tell people is to have that plan B. Know that only you can choose how your life's going to roll. Don't leave it to anybody else. So that's a little bit of my story about why I wrote the book. I was, as I was speaking, people were saying, God, I love your message. It's inspiring. know, my husband and I were, you know, our life is changing because of your speech. Where's your book? And I said, well, I don't have one. Well, never let a good pandemic go to waste. So when the pandemic rolled around, it was like, okay. I've got the time to do it. My mom was aging and she said, God, I sure would like to have a book for my son before I ever leave and transition out of this earth. So that gave me a little more motivation to finish it. And that was a beautiful moment, even though I had to give it to her by mail because ⁓ COVID was taking place and nobody could travel. But that was my story. Always have a plan B and find out what you're passionate about. Never, never stop short of your dreams in achieving your plan B. speaker-0: You can settle in a lot of things but never settle in your dreams or something like that, right? Just don't sell yourself short on what you can achieve. You know, we all have the divine spark within us. We're capable of achieving whatever it is that we set our minds to, whatever it is that we truly want to achieve, we will achieve as long as we're intentional about it and we take that bet on ourselves. And I think that situation that you described that you shared about is gonna happen to a lot more people. You know, this reality, this technology, artificial intelligence is gonna create job displacement. and you know the optimist in me is that I'm really excited about this shift because I think it's going to force a lot more people into a situation where they have to figure out how to create their own value in the world. And basically all that means like we're going to have more entrepreneurs right who are out there solving problems. And I think in order to be successful in a business you have to truly care about the problem that you're solving the people that you're helping. And I think that's going to light a lot of people up. You know a lot of people are working in jobs that they really don't like. And I think them kind of being kicked out is going to force them into a situation where they got to do a lot more internal self-reflection and again figure out how to create their own value in the world. And they're going to be working on things that they genuinely enjoy and are more gifted at. And I'm excited about that. But people like you are going to be absolutely critical in helping to help people successfully navigate that transition because it's not easy. speaker-1: Ian, I'm seeing it already. I'm seeing it already in my clients. I'm seeing clients that have done well and they've been disillusioned by the corporate world. They've been disillusioned by what success is. And they're looking for meaning and purpose. You know, there was a quote by Bob Goff that I always loved and it was, you know, I used to worry about making enough money. Now I worry about making a difference. And I see more and more people that are worried about making a difference. And as long as they have psychological and financial security. they're free to go about making a difference. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think some people are going to exit the corporate world in order to beat the AI steamroller that's coming down the road. And I think they're going to look for more meaning and purpose in their life. speaker-0: The great paradox of that, as Bob Berg shared in a podcast that we did a couple weeks ago, is that when you lead with that intention of just making a difference, not purely making a profit, not looking for what can I get from this person, but just leading in every interaction and everything that you do with the focus of how can I provide value, how can I help this person, how can I make a difference, the great paradox is that if you truly lead with that, the financial success will come, inevitably. speaker-1: I'm glad you mentioned Bob Berg, and if your listeners don't know who Bob Berg is, run out. Don't just grab one of his books. Grab all of his books. Bob's a treasure. Talk about servant leadership. Talk about when we shift our focus from what's in it for me to how can I serve the world, amazing things will start to happen in your life. And that's where I have, that's where God's transformed me to being a servant leader and being one that is less worried. about where I'm positioned on the email list and more about how's this going to affect, how's this going to transform someone? How's this going to be generational? speaker-0: Stan, thank you so much for the time today. If you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for 10 seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-1: My deepest fear is not that I'm inadequate. My deepest fear is that I'm powerful beyond measure. You see, it's not my darkness that most frightens me. It's my light. You see, I'm asked, who am I to be? Brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Who am I not to be? See, I'm a child of God. My playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around me. We're all meant to shine as children do. was born to manifest the glory of God within me and not just within me, but in everyone. So as I let my own light shine, I'm unconsciously giving other people permission to do the same. And I'm liberated from my own fear. My presence automatically liberates others. You see, I love that Ian, because I agree so much with it's not our inadequacy that we're afraid of. It's our light. It's our ability to be something much greater, something more than we've ever imagined. And we have that part of our brain that's stopping us from going there. We're afraid of that. And that's what I want. I want people to a rich and intentional life. want people to see what they can become, not what they did become years ago or what they've been led to believe. So that's what I would leave with you. can't put it on a billboard, but that would be my quote. speaker-0: Amazing Stan, thank you so much for the time. speaker-1: Thank you, I appreciate Ian. All the best. Thank you for having me on. ⁓ I truly feel blessed. speaker-0: Thank you for listening. My biggest takeaway from this conversation is that intention is not a mindset you visit once in a while. It has to become a structure that you live daily. That was the real center of what Stan was saying in his whole system. Most people do not need more inspiration. They need a way to stop drifting and running on autopilot. The part that really stuck with me is his shift from saying, should or I will to therefore I must because that is where identity turns into action and something that you live. today, not five years in the future, but today. Strong founders and operators know this pattern well. What gets repeated gets built into the system. If you do not build it on purpose, life will build one for you by default. That applies to both your business and your marriage, your health, your purpose, and the way that you spend your limited time here on earth. If you want to get connected with Stan, you can find his website, his book, Living a Rich and Intentional Life, and his free Double Down on Me tool in the description of this episode. If you run a coaching program, course, or mastermind, and your clients aren't completing the work, download the free Program Execution System Toolkit in the description. It shows you how to install execution infrastructure so your clients actually follow through and get the results that your program promises. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.